392 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



one; for, though the remains of pachyderms seem 

 to be more abundant than any others, this may well 

 be a result of their peculiar habits and the swampy 

 condition of the land near where the beds were depo- 

 sited, and we know that such animals are at present, 

 and may well suppose that they always were, asso- 

 ciated with numerous and powerful species of Carni- 

 vora. 



Besides, however, these facts with regard to the 

 present distribution of quadrupeds, we find that the 

 distribution of the groups in times not long past ex- 

 hibited a strictly analogous class of results. In South 

 America, for instance, the horse and several other 

 pachyderms, several hollow-horned ruminants, and 

 some carnivores of larger proportions than now exist, 

 anciently inhabited the country and were contem- 

 poraries of the gigantic edentates. There is some 

 evidence also to prove that North and South America 

 were formerly united much more directly than they 

 are now, the more highly organized group seeming 

 to have been destroyed in the southern part of the 

 continent, but having been retained in the northern. 

 So also in England and western Europe we find fossil 

 monkeys, and indications of vast multitudes of large 

 Carnivora and pachyderms, although these animals 

 have there been for a long time nearly or altogether 

 extinct. 



The result that we are forced to arrive at from 

 such considerations as these is, that climate and at- 

 mospheric conditions, the consequence probably of 

 differences in the quantity of land above water in 

 certain districts, in the relative position, the exten- 

 sion, and the level of the land, combined, it may be, 



