Life of Lower Lake Region. 117 



of a fox, marking, perhaps, the extreme range 

 of the family. 



In looking over the cases that contain the 

 fossils of these lower lake beds with the 

 thought of the comparative numbers of these 

 large mammals in mind, the figures were 

 found to be rhinoceros five, horses seven, dogs 

 four, cats three, peccaries and hogs five, oreo- 

 dons twenty; and these numbers fairly repre- 

 sent their relative frequency in the fossil beds. 

 It will be seen, then, that in the frequency 

 of their occurrence as fossils one sees the im- 

 portance of their place in the life record of 

 the Miocene. Paleontologists ascribe to this 

 skeleton some features of the deer, others of 

 the camel, and with great unanimity set him 

 down as a ruminating hog, and his anatomy as 

 that of a comprehensive type from which hog 

 and deer and camel may have descended. 



One can scarcely study such a form, as he 

 loosens fragment after fragment from a crum- 

 bling hillside, without a conviction that the 

 law of lineal descent, with the holding power 

 of heredity and the directing power of an all 



