Animals of North America 



and meat; to the real nature lover, the true sports- 

 man, the scientific student, each of these types is 

 a subject of intense admiration. From the 

 mechanical standpoint they represent an architect- 

 ure more elaborate than that of Westminster 

 Abbey, and a history beside which human history 

 is as of yesterday. 



SLOW EVOLUTION OF MODERN MAMMALS. 



These animals were not made in a day, nor in a 

 thousand years, nor in a million years. As said 

 the first Greek philosopher, Empedocles, who 560 

 B. C. adumbrated the "survival of the fittest" 

 theory of Darwin, they are the result of ceaseless 

 trials of nature. While the Sequoia was first 

 emerging from the Carboniferous, or Coal Period, 

 the reptile-like ancestors of these mammals, cov- 

 ered with scales and of egg-laying habits, were 

 crawling about and giving not the most remote 

 prophecy of their potential transformation through 

 10,000,000 of years into the superb fauna of the 

 northern hemisphere. 



The descendants of these reptiles were trans- 

 formed into mammals. If we had had the oppor- 

 tunity of studying the early mammals of the 

 Rocky Mountain region with a full appreciation 

 of the possibilities of evolution, we should have 



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