. All these peculiarly African animals, of
African origin, I believe, found their way into Europe at least as far
as the Sivalik Hills of India, but never across the Bering Sea
Isthmus. The only truly African animal which reached America, and which
flourished here in an extraordinary manner, was the elephant, or rather
the mastodon, if we speak of the elephant in its Miocene stage of
evolution. However, the resemblance between America and Africa is
abundantly demonstrated by the presence of great herds of horses, of
rhinoceroses, both long and short limbed, of camels in great variety,
including the giraffe-like type which was capable of browsing on the
higher branches of trees, of small elephants, and of deer, which in
adaptation to somewhat arid conditions imitated the antelopes in general
structure.

ELIMINATION BY THE GLACIAL PERIOD.

The Glacial Period eliminated half of this fauna, whereas the equatorial
latitude of the fauna in Africa saved that fauna from the attack of the
Glacial Period, which was so fatally destructive to the animals in the
more northerly latitudes of America. The glaciers or at least the very
low temperature of the period eliminated especially all the African
aspects of our fauna. This destructive agency was almost as baneful and
effective as the mythical Noah's flood. When it passed off, there
survived comparatively few indigenous North American animals, but the
country was repopulated from the entire northern hemisphere, so that the
magnificent wild animals which our ancestors found here were partly
North American and partly Eurasiatic in origin.

ELIMINATION BY MAN.

Our animal fortune seemed to us so enormous that it never could be
spent. Like a young rake coming into a very large inheritance, we
attacked this noble fauna with characteristic American improvidence, and
with a rapidity compared with which the Glacial advance was eternally
slow; the East went first, and in fifty years we have brought about an
elimination in the West which promises to be even more radical than that
effected by the ice. We are now beginning to see the end of the North
American fauna; and if we do not move promptly, it will become a matter
of history and of museums. The bison is on the danger line; if it
survives the fatal effects of its natural sluggishness when abundantly
fed, it still runs the more insidious but equally great danger of
inbreeding, like the wild ox of Europe. The chances for the wapiti and