OF CREATION. 291 



absence of the tribe of ruminants. None of those 

 which are so useful and almost necessary to man 

 were then to be seen. The deer tribe and the goat, 

 the sheep, the ox, the camel, all are wanting, and 

 their place was filled by various representatives be- 

 longing to the tribe of which the hog, the horse, the 

 rhinoceros, and the elephant, are the present types. 

 These, indeed, were abundant and varied enough, 

 both in their dimensions, their appearance, and their 

 habits. Some swam in the water; some tripped 

 lightly and elegantly on the borders of the marshes ; 

 others, constantly on the alert, ran like the wind at 

 the slightest approach of danger, or were watch- 

 ing that they might escape by flight or conceal- 

 ment the fate that attended them. Everything was 

 thus perfectly adapted to animal wants and neces- 

 sities, but no preparation was yet made for man. 

 Quadrupeds had taken the place once held by rep- 

 tiles, and include herbivorous as well as carnivorous 

 forms, and so far an advance seems to be indicated , 

 but the destructive races still preponderated in point 

 of numbers and importance. 



Such seems to have been the condition of things at 

 this early tertiary period, as far as is made known 

 by geological investigations in Europe, and thus grand 

 seems to have been the first development of the 

 higher types of animal existence, if, indeed, our ig- 

 norance of more ancient tracts of widely extended 

 land may not have led us falsely to the conclusion 

 that true mammalian quadrupeds were only abundant 

 during the last epoch of the earth's history. 



o 2 



