PRIMITIVE FLESH EATERS — Order, CREODONTA 
SOME of my younger readers may have asked themselves by 
this time how the order of the larger groups of our subject is 
determined, — why the Insectivora followed the Primates, 
the Carnivora are to come next, then the Ungulata, and so on. 
The reason is, partly, that their ancestors, so far as we know 
them as fossils, seem to have been related in a way which in- 
dicates such a succession. It is scarcely more than an indica- 
tion, however, for although in describing them, or making a list, 
we must set the animals in a row, naturalists long ago ceased 
attempting to show that any linear arrangement ene 
of that kind represented the reality. The present  Classifica- 
variety among mammals (as in other classes) is the nore 
result of development along different lines from one or more 
points of beginning, so that any proper picture of the growth 
and arrangement of any class would be that of a spreading fan, 
with sticks of unequal length; or that of the branches of a tree 
— some reaching farther than others and themselves dividing 
again and again into twigs. 
“One of the most striking and significant results of the study of the later 
Mesozoic and earliest Tertiary mammalian faunas,” says Professor Scott, 
“is that the higher or placental mammals are seen to be converging back 
to a common ancestral group of clawed and carnivorous or omnivorous 
animals, now entirely extinct, to which the name of Creodonta was given by 
Cope. The creodonts are assuredly the ancestors of the modern flesh 
eaters, and, very probably, of the great series of hoofed animals also, as 
well as of other orders. From this central, ancestral group the other orders 
proceed, diverging more and more with the progress of time, each larger 
79 
