588 



CENOZOIC TIME. 



ocean. In no other period of geological history have so large masses 

 of stone been moved over the earth's surface as in the Glacial and 

 Champlain periods. 



These Quaternary agencies were active everywhere over the conti- 

 nents, putting the finishing strokes to the nearly completed globe. 

 There was a development of beauty as well as utility in all these 

 later movements. Those conditions and special surface-details were 

 developed that were most essential to the pastoral, agricultural, and 

 intellectual pursuits which were about to commence. 



3. Life. — Grand characteristic of the Tertiary and Quaternary 

 Ages. — The prominent fact in the life is the expansion and culmina- 

 tion of the type of Mammals. This culmination, as regards brute 

 Mammals, took place in the Middle Quaternary, when the Carnivores, 

 Herbivores, Edentates, and Marsupials far exceeded in number and 

 size those of the present time. It was the great feature, not of one 

 continent alone, but of all the continents, and on each under its own 

 peculiar type of Mammalian life. 



Man appeared before the Champlain Mammals had gone. But an 

 era of cold — the second glacial — after a while intervened ; and then 

 there went forward — partly, if not wholly, in consequence of the cold 

 — the extermination of these gigantic species, leaving only smaller 

 races for the era of man's development. In this, the true Human era, 

 the Animal element is consequently no longer dominant, but Mind, in 

 the possession of a being at the head of the kingdoms of life. The 

 era bears the impress of its exalted characteristic, even in the dimin- 

 ished size of its beasts of prey. 



Range of Vertebrate types. — The following table presents to the eye 

 the range of the more common Vertebrate types, through the Mesozoic 

 and Cenozoic, showing those which began in the Paleozoic, those which 

 have their commencement, culmination, and end within these eras, and 

 those which continue into the age of Man. The symbol ) ( signifies 

 having biconcave vertebrae. Under Tertiary, the letters E., M., P. 

 stand for Eocene, Miocene, Pliocene : Q. stands for Quaternary. 



