THE HORNS AND ANTLERS OF RUMINANTS. 249 



their comrades slake their thirst."* Hunting man adds to these 

 fears, but is also feared by the beasts of prey, which before his 

 coming knew no restraint save their surly respect for one another, 

 and suffered no check save from the defensive armature of their 

 intended victims. Among the destructive agents of Tertiary times 

 a unique position was held by the (now extinct) Machserodonts, 

 tiger-like felines with immensely-prolonged upper canine teeth, 

 recurved sabre-like and sometimes with serrated edges, enabling 

 them " to retain like barbs the prey whose quivering flesh they 

 penetrated" (Owen). Members of the genus exhibiting "the 

 most specially carnivorous type of dental structure known" 

 (Lydekker) appear in the Eocene (Phosphorites of Quercy) and 

 traverse the whole of the Tertiary period, the scourge alike of the 

 Old and of the New World. Associated with the early Machse- 

 rodonts were ancestral Dogs, foreshadowing the Bears on the one 

 hand (Amphicyon) and the Civets on the other (Cynodictis) ; while 

 from the Pliocene, and onwards, Lions and Tigers allied to 

 living species, and true Canidce — Dogs and Wolves, hunting their 

 prey in packs and of world-wide distribution — swelled the grim 

 record of flesh-eaters and forced the unremitting slaughter of 

 hosts of ungulates. In this great struggle the more adaptive 

 ungulate groups, chiefly of the pair-hoofed section (Artiodactyles) , 

 becoming specially modified for a defensive purpose, survived and 

 multiplied ; but the less adaptive groups, chiefly of the odd-hoofed 

 section (Perissodactyles), failing modification in this respect, were 

 slowly exterminated. 



He who surveys to-day the roll of existing ungulates in a 

 state of nature cannot fail to reflect upon the great numerical 

 preponderance of horned and antlered genera over those devoid 

 of cranial armature. Of the perissodactyle section there survive 

 but three genera (Tapirus, Equus, Rhinoceros), and one of these 

 is horned ; while of the artiodactyle section we have fifty genera, 

 forty of which are claimed by ruminants with horns or antlers, 

 and four by Pigs with tusks. Yet at the dawn of Tertiary time 

 the balance of numbers was far the other way. In the gypsum 



* Comp. Mr. Selous on " the cold cruelty of Nature's inexorable laws " 

 (op. tit., 413), and Lieut, von Kohnel on the restless movement of the count- 

 less herds of animals giving life to the splendid panorama south of the Nyuki 

 river in Brit. E. Africa— " There seemed to be always something suspicious 

 in the air. . . ." ('Teleki Expedition,' ii. 20). 



