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identical with the tree-dwelling lemurs which still survive in great 

 variety in Madagascar and are also found in the forests of Africa 

 and Southern Asia. These lemurs may be described as monkeys 

 with inferior brains. It is generally supposed that some of the 

 Eocene forms became "improved" into monkeys, which appeared 

 in Miocene times. The apes and man followed later ; and if popular 

 surmises as to the origin of the human animal ever prove true, we 

 may anticipate the demonstration that he comes from a long line of 

 ancestors which developed their faculties and perfected their 

 wonderful limbs while hunting for a mixed diet in the thick forest, 

 and did not come down to compete with ordinary land-mammals 

 until the latest times. 



The earliest Eocene mammals which began to live on the 

 ground, probably chiefly in swamps and on the banks of rivers, are 

 best known by nearly complete skeletons from North America. 

 Fragments from Western Europe are enough to show that similar 

 animals lived here. They are all small, many of them not larger 

 than cats, with a complete set of teeth fitted for cropping and 

 crushing succulent food. Their brain is of as low a type as that of 

 the pouched mammals of Australia — much lower and smaller than 

 the brain of a modern cat or pig. Their tail is always long, and it is 

 very thick at the root, thus resembling the tail as shaped in a reptile. 

 Their feet at first are always five-toed, and the bones of the forearm 

 are adapted for an easy twisting motion. 



In some of the primitive mammals just described (Condylarthva) 

 the teeth are comparatively blunt and the toe-nails are almost 

 hoof-shaped, indicating a herbivorous nature. In others (Creodonta) 

 the teeth are more pointed and compressed, while the toes are sharp, 

 evidently marks of adaptation to flesh-feeding. In the Middle and 

 Upper Eocene and Oligocene mammals, of which remains occur in 

 the Hampshire basin, these divergences have progressed further, 

 and the beginnings both of typical hoofed animals (Ungulata) and 

 typical flesh-eaters (Cavnivora) are evident. Cuvier restored some of 

 these animals a century ago from specimens discovered in the Paris 

 gypsum, but most of our knowledge of them now depends on the 

 study of nearly complete skeletons found in corresponding geological 

 formations in North America. 



As observed by Cuvier, the nearest surviving relative of some 

 of the Upper Eocene hoofed animals (e.g., Palaothevium) is the 

 marsh-dwelling tapir of southern Asia and tropical America. It is 

 reminiscent of the times when hoofed animals were confined to 

 marshes. After the Eocene period most of them began to spread 

 over grassy plains, and those which grew in brain-power as well as 

 in the adaptation of the bodily frame for the new mode of life, 

 eventually passed into the rhinoceroses and horses on the one hand, 

 and into the antelopes, cattle, deer and their allies on the other. 

 Every stage in this progress can be traced by the fossils discovered 

 in successive geological formations above the Eocene. 



