From Scott's •■History of the I, 



Iammals of the Western Hemisphere": Macmillan Company 

 'HIS REPRESENTS A SCENE AT THE CALIFORNIA ASPHALT PITS, WITH A MIRED 

 ELEPHANT, TWO GIANT WOLVES, AND A SABER-TOOTHED TIGER (SEE PAGE 399) 



larly believed that the tropics possess an 

 exuberance of life beyond that of other 

 climes, yet in no tropic lands or seas, ex- 

 cept in parts of Africa and southern 

 Asia, has there been developed such an 

 abundance of large mammal life as these 

 northern latitudes have repeatedly known. 



In temperate and arctic lands such 

 numbers of large mammals could exist 

 only where the vegetation not only suf- 

 ficed for summer needs, but retained its 

 nourishing qualities through the winter. 

 In the sea the vast numbers of seals, sea- 

 lions, walruses, and whales of many kinds 

 could be maintained only by a limitless 

 profusion of fishes and other marine life. 



From the earliest appearance of mam- 

 mals on the globe to comparatively recent 

 times one mammalian fauna has suc- 

 ceeded another in the regular sequence of 

 evolution, man appearing late on the 

 scene and being subject to the same nat- 

 ural influences as his mammalian kindred. 

 During the last few centuries, however, 

 through the development of agriculture, 

 the invention of new methods of trans- 

 portation, and of modern firearms, so- 



called civilized man has spread over and 

 now dominates most parts of the earth. 

 As a result, aboriginal man and the 

 large mammals of continental areas have 

 been, or are being, swept away and re- 

 placed by civilized man and his domestic 

 animals. Orderly evolution of the mar- 

 velously varied mammal life in a state of 

 nature is thus being brought to an abrupt 

 end. Henceforth fossil beds containing 

 deposits of mammals caught in sink- 

 holes, and formed by river and other 

 floods in subarctic, temperate, and trop- 

 ical parts of the earth, will contain more 

 and more exclusively the bones of man 

 and his domesticated horses, cattle, and 

 sheep. 



DESTROYING THE IRRESTORABLE 



The splendid mammals which possessed 

 the earth until man interfered were the 

 ultimate product of Nature working 

 through the ages that have elapsed since 

 the dawn of life. All of them show 

 myriads of exquisite adaptations to their 

 environment in color, form, organs, and 

 habits. The wanton destruction of anv 



401 



