The Tertiary Age. 165 



totally different character to forest vegetation from 

 that of the preceding period. The same abrupt 

 transition has been observed in Europe and other 

 countries. 



182. In the early tertiary, which was the begin- 

 ning of the next age, called the caenozoic, the 

 world was full of true mammals, many 



of great size, while no such mammal has ® e iary 

 yet been detected in any earlier beds 

 (No. 172 above). " The abruptness of the transition 

 is astounding," says Professor Dana, " and needs 

 facts for its full elucidation. The same abruptness 

 in the introduction of the tertiary mammals occurs 

 in the beds of other continents, as well tropical 

 India, as colder Europe. ,, This is the age that 

 seems to correspond with the sixth day of the Mosaic 

 cosmogony, where Moses places the production of 

 the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping 

 things, and beasts of the earth according to their 

 kinds. 



183. Here, then, we are on the threshold of 

 man's home, which is just being finished for his 

 residence. It is not completed so far, that he can 

 subsist in it as yet. Hence no one ever thinks of 

 looking for man in tertiary times: they look for a 

 kind of man, a progenitor to the one that is — ac- 

 cording to evolution, a pithecoid man, an anthro- 

 pitheque. He himself could not be. It was the 

 time of great changes when whole genera of ani- 

 mate beings were undergoing modifications, by pro- 



