THE REIGN OF MAMMALS. 203 



had their representatives in Europe during this period. 

 The prevailing types of quadrupeds were thick-skinned — 

 Pachyderms — and cud -chewing — Ruminants. The hog 

 and the horse began to exist in the middle of the Tertiary; 

 and somewhat later appear, either in Europe or Asia, the 

 cat, dog, weasel, hare, mink, hyena, camel, antelope, musk- 

 deer, sheep, and ox — of the latter, several species. The Si- 

 vatherium was an elephantine stag, having four horns and 

 probably a long proboscis. It is supposed to have had the 

 bulk of an elephant, and greater height. This monster 

 dwelt in southeastern Asia. Many other genera, quite dis- 

 tinct from existing forms, have had their former existence 

 disclosed by the patient researches of the comparative an- 

 atomist. 



America was also a range of gigantic quadrupeds, while 

 the adjacent seas were the abode of mammalian forms al- 

 lied to the whale. Of these, the one best known is the 

 Zeuglodon, whose bones are scattered over portions of the 

 cotton-lands of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South 

 Carolina. It is a striking sight to stumble over vertebrae 

 a foot and a half long and a foot in diameter, or to see 

 them plowed up from the black soil where they had been 

 mouldering ever since that soil was a sea-bottom. Yet 

 these bones were once so numerous in Southern Alabama 

 that they were gathered and burned for lime, and laid in 

 walls for fences. I have myself seen them used for andi- 

 rons, and for building the steps of a stile over the door- 

 yard fence. This animal was about seventy feet in length. 

 The skeleton on exhibition in Wood's Museum, at Chicago, 

 is for the most part a genuine representation of the frame- 

 work of this Tertiary, alligator-like whale. Some of the 

 vertebrae were wanting in this specimen ; and in the at- 

 tempt to restore the missing parts, the paleo-artist has pos- 

 sibly exceeded the bounds of truth, and given us a skeleton 



