ABSTRACT
Lions and monkys, hippopotami and crocodiles, with elephants, hyenas, and rhinoceroces, now live beneath the palms, mimosas, acacias, and other tropical plants represented in the Eocene and Miocene beds. The inquiry as to the how and the when is an absolutely essential preliminary in any such investigation; and is inseparably united in nature with the general question of how the great geological changes have taken place in the past. An abundant warm-climate vegetation once mantled all the polar regions, and its fossils have been found just about as far north as explorers have ever gone; while Dana says that, “The encasing in ice of huge elephants, and the perfect preservation of the flesh, shows that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter’s night, and knew no relenting afterwards.” Doubtless this scathing impeachment of the common mania for creating new names for the fossils has especial reference to the case of the lower forms of life.
