2G Colorado College Studies. 



corn epoch than to-day, as the present elevation of the cave 

 approaches 7,000 feet. And as the two conditions above 

 predicated are those most likely to have prevailed, it seems 

 quite probable that NemorJuvdns as an element of the North 

 American fauna, belonged to the Champlain phase of the 

 Glacial epoch. 



Though the differences may be due to variant conditions 

 of preservation in the cave-earth in which they were imbedded, 

 and hence not significant of difference in age, the Horse 

 phalanges from the cave at Glen Eyrie are darker, heavier, 

 and much more thoroughly mineralized than the bones of 

 the Capricorn, and are, seemingly, much older. They belong, 

 however, to rather a slender-limbed type of Equus that occurs 

 in Kansas in deposits which are probably late Pliocene or 

 early Postpliocene, and thus tend to show that the caves in 

 the Manitou limestone date back at least as far as the begin- 

 ning of the Quaternary, and not improbably had their origin 

 in the later part of the Tertiary age. 



The finding of Goat- Antelopes as members of the Pleisto- 

 cene or earlier fauna of the Rocky Mountains was quite un- 

 expected, but is no more remarkable than that Elephants, 

 which, not only by present habitat but also by the very place 

 of their origin from the Mastodon stock, are Asiatic types, 

 abounded in Pleistocene times throughout North America, to 

 which the Asiatic fauna doubtless had measurable access by 

 way of lands now interrupted in the vicinity of Behring's 

 Straits. The Asiatic Mammoth occurs in transsierran Amer- 

 ica, and Elephant remains of an extinct species related to 

 the Mammoth and to the Modern Asiatic, rather than the 

 African Elephant, are common on the Great Plains, and not 

 rare in the old river gravels which underlie Denver, Colorado 

 Springs and Colorado City, and have been found as high in 

 the Rocky Mountains at least as the bogs of Grassy Gulch, 

 in the Cripple Creek district. It serves to show how imper- 

 fect still is our knowledge of even the most recent chapters 

 of the earth's history, to emphasize the interest of the great 

 stone book of nature which too often we pass by without an 

 attempt to read, and to show how the darkest cave, carefully 

 studied, may prove a torch to illumine a page of that book as 

 well as its own mystic interior. 



