210 TERTIAKY TIMES. 



between two or three conterminous families ; yet, on the 

 whole, we see in the mastodons and mammoths, the palaso- 

 theres and anoplotheres, the hyopotami and chaeropotami, 

 the sivatheres and merycotheres, the machairodons and 

 hysenodons, the prototypes and forerunners of the elephants, 

 rhinoceroses, hippopotami, river-hogs, antelopes, giraffes, 

 camels, horses, oxen, lions, tigers, and hyaenas, that now 

 inhabit the eastern hemisphere. In like manner the me- 

 gatheres, mylodons, glyptodons, and macrauchenes of South 

 America, were the gigantic forerunners of the sloths, arma- 

 dilloes, and llamas that now people that continent ; while the 

 diprotodons, zygomatures, and nototheres of Australia, fore- 

 shadow the kangaroos and wombats so exclusively charac- 

 teristic of that peculiar sub-continent.* Everything, indeed, 

 both in flora and fauna, indicates the approach of existing 

 nature; but this, as in all other cosmical operations, by 

 slow and gradual steps the eocene, miocene, and pliocene, 

 each having its own special phases, and these diverging 

 from those of the current epoch according to their relative 

 distances in time. 



What a picturesque and luxuriant scene these grassy 

 plains and glades and river -banks of the old tertiary times 

 must have presented ! Uplands fretted with scrub, la- 

 goons and river-creeks fringed with palms and tropical 

 forest-growths, and swampy deltas teeming with tangling 

 jungle. Herds of antelope- and horse-like forms (anoplo- 

 theres and hippotheres) scattered over the uplands j carni- 

 vora (hysenodon and cynodon) lurking among the rocks and 

 bushes by the water-springs ; elephants, tapirs, and wart- 

 hogs (mastodons, palseotheres, and hyopotami) down by the 



* By a perusal of the illustrations in any work on Palaeontology, such as 

 Owen's ' Fossil Mammals/ the non-scientific reader will be enabled to trace 

 the resemblance between these extinct forms and the existing fauna far 

 more readily than by any amount of verbal description. 



