The kangaroos and wallabies (Macropodidæ) represent the highest development of the marsupial type, and number some fifty species spread over all Australia and New Guinea. While the majority inhabit open grassy plains, others brushy districts and rocks, and a few dwell in trees, the kangaroos proper include half a dozen of the largest kinds, the commonest of which is the great gray "boomer" or "forester," of the colonists, often seen in menageries. It stands four to five feet tall, with a tail thirty to thirty-six inches long; but this size is considerably exceeded by that of the red or woolly kangaroo, of eastern and southern Australia. Furthermore, fossil remains show that in the Pleistocene era kangaroos far bigger than even these existed there in numerous extinct species—one, for instance, whose skull alone measured nearly a yard in length. These animals take the place in Australia of the deer of northern countries. They are very gregarious, and are always to be met with in droves. Each drove frequents a certain district and has its particular camping and feeding grounds. The animal has a dreadful weapon of defense in the powerful hind claw, which it can use like the tusk of a boar.

The smaller kangaroos are called "wallabies," or brush kangaroos, and frequent scrub jungle and rocky places. These furnish most of the skins and leather sent to European markets and, like the big species of the plains, have been greatly reduced in numbers by hunters and sheep herders. Some of them are confined to the rough deserts and mountains, where they jump about the rocks with astonishing agility. One small genus includes the swift harelike species that resemble our jack rabbits in habits; and there are also the "dorca" kangaroos, which are arboreal in habit and handsomely colored. Another group are ratlike in form, colors, and manners, running rather than leaping, and dwelling among scrub and grass, scratching the ground all day in search of the roots upon which they feed, and making havoc in the frontiersman's potato patches. Several kinds have prehensile tails, which they use apparently only to carry to their underground homes the long grass of which they make their beds. They associate in connected burrows like a rabbit warren.

In the varied forms and functions they present, as beasts of prey, as grazers or root diggers, as ground-running, tree-climbing, burrowing or cave-haunting forms, some solitary and slow, others agile and gregarious, the marsupial tribe in its isolated corner of the earth exhibits an epitome of the whole mammalian world. It shows in a conspicuous way how the necessity and habit of making a living in varied circumstances, and exposed to lively competition, restricting every species to a particular manner, brings about a suitable modification of structure.

THE EDENTATA—ANTEATERS, SLOTHS, AND ARMADILLOS

At the base of the great division of Eutherian mammals, to which belong all that remain to be described, is found the order Edentata ("toothless"), whose modern representatives are few and unimportant in comparison with those of past ages, when gigantic ground sloths, armored glyptodons, and other fossil species flourished in a luxuriant world. The name is not well chosen, for many of these animals possess at least a few teeth, but always composed of vasodentine and not coated with enamel. Although the origin of this race is obscure, it was certainly far in the past, for its characters are archaic in many particulars, and its members are often far separated in structure, and also in their geographical distribution. Two families belong to the Old World, one in the Orient and another in South Africa, but all the other edentates are American. The Oriental one includes most of the "pangolins," or scaly anteaters, which are covered from head to foot in a coat of mail formed of overlapping horny plates, and can roll themselves into a ball that will defy any jaws not big enough to tear them to pieces; while the African family consists of the naked, long-nosed aard-vark ("ant bear"), which burrows in the ground, and cuts its way at night into the mud forts of termites and other ants in search of its favorite food. These two ancient creatures differ so much in their anatomy from the American edentates that they are classified by some naturalists in a separate order (Fodentia); and they differ almost as radically from one another.

It should not be surprising to find most of the modern edentates in South America, since that is the most ancient and unchanged of all the continents; but a few sorts of anteaters, sloths, and armadillos alone remain where once their race, in its heroic age, dominated the world of its time. The puny survivors look and act like the relics they are. The "great" anteater, or tamandua, standing eighteen inches or more in height, has flatfooted, bearlike hind feet, and short forelegs that end in huge claws bent under, or backward, so that the animal walks on the outer face of its toes. Its tail is a great bushy mass of hair with which the animal may cover itself as with a blanket, and its long neck tapers off into a head with a very long nose and little room for brains. The big claws are not used for burrowing an underground home, but for digging up the nests of ants and termites which it licks up with its long, sticky tongue. When one realizes the enormous colonies of ants in the tropics it is not amazing that so large an animal should subsist exclusively on these minute creatures. The claws are formidable weapons of defense also, the animal throwing itself on its back and defying the foe, or rising on its hind legs and giving a tearing, bearlike hug that even a man might well fear. This is a slow-moving creature, more fond of open country than forests; but a smaller tamandua belongs wholly to the woods and spends both days and nights in the tree tops, tearing open the burrows and nests of arboreal insects and devouring their inhabitants and their stores of honey and young. A third species is the rare little yellow two-toed anteater of the Isthmus region, which appears to live almost wholly on wasp grubs.

Much like these in organization are the two species of sloth, hairy creatures that hang all day long by their long, muscular limbs and two or three curved claws, underneath a branch of the tree through whose top they slowly creep about at night, collecting, crushing with their peglike teeth, and swallowing the leaves that constitute their fare. Their long hair, naturally gray, becomes green by accumulating a coating of minute plants that thrive on it, and this helps to conceal the sloths amid the foliage, yet they are killed by eagles and by all sorts of beasts of prey, against which they have no means of defense. These listless creatures are the degenerate descendants of a very long ancestry. The early Tertiary rocks of Argentina contain the bones of small slothlike animals that apparently were ground dwellers and must have been active diggers. Later that region became filled with larger ground sloths, apparently their descendants, that are believed to have browsed on bushes and trees; and some of these became the megatheres of the late Tertiary, which were as big as elephants. Similar giants inhabited North America.

Even in the earliest days known to paleontologists the anteater-sloth group had become well separated from their fellow edentates, the armadillos, arguing a far-preceding origin. In the later Tertiary the latter type developed such huge and heavily armored forms as the glyptodon, on whose bony shell the teeth of even the great saber-toothed tigers of the time could make little impression. These grotesque tortoiselike glyptodons, of which there was a great variety, were vegetable eaters, and some survived to a time so recent that there is evidence that they were finally killed off by human hunters. Beside them were smaller armadillos, more like the modern ones, which are armored with overlapping belts of horny material between which coarse hairs sprout; but the amount of this armor varies greatly among the several species scattered from Patagonia to northern Mexico. In some it is a continuous shell, in others it consists of several belts, in still others is nearly absent. Armadillos are carnivorous, digging out worms, grubs and the underground nests of wasps, catching insects of all sorts, stealing eggs and young from ground-nesting birds, killing serpents by leaping on them and sawing their bodies in two by means of the rough edges of their plates. In some places on the pampas armadillo burrows are so numerous as to make riding dangerous.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE GNAWERS

The great order Rodentia—rats, mice, rabbits, porcupines, squirrels, beavers, etc., derives its name from the Latin verb rodere, to gnaw, or eat away (something), and is characterized by the great development of the front (incisor) teeth, by means of which rodents get their living by biting off, or gnawing through, the plants and woody stems on which they feed, or which they use in constructing their dwellings. All are primarily vegetable eaters, yet none will refuse a meal of flesh when opportunity offers to get it, and some are decidedly carnivorous, especially as to fish. They are distributed all over the world, including the Australian region. They are chiefly terrestrial, and often burrow or live in ready-made burrows. Some are aquatic, such as the voles; others, like the squirrels, are arboreal. In perhaps a majority of the forms the hind legs are much longer and stronger than the forelegs, giving the animals great leaping power, while the forefeet, with their long and flexible fingers, are constantly used as hands. Many are beautifully marked in varied tints of gray, brown, red, and black, so that their pelts have value in the fur market; and their flesh is an important element in human food. On the other hand the activity of these animals, when numerous, causes serious damage to gardens, crops and orchards and one of them, the rat, is unquestionably the most dangerous animal to human health and prosperity in the whole animal kingdom. The fecundity of the smaller, murine species, is great, and from time to time they increase inordinately in favorable places, and swarm abroad in vast and destructive migrations. Were it not for the fact that the rodents furnish the principal part of the food of predatory mammals, reptiles, and birds, and are thus kept down, the globe would soon become so populous with this tribe that hardly anything else could maintain existence.

The distinguishing anatomical characteristic of the rodents is the dentition. The canines, so essential to carnivorous, predatory animals, are here completely absent, and a long empty space intervenes between the incisors and the molars, or cheek teeth, which vary greatly in number and form among the different families. The incisors consist of a single pair in each jaw, very large and strong, and composed of vasodentine, faced only with hard enamel, often yellow or red. As the softer substance behind the facing wears away more easily, the incisor takes a chisel shape, leaving the hard enamel in front projecting slightly as a cutting edge; thus these teeth always remain sharp. The rodents are traced back in their lineage to the order Tillodontia of Eocene time. The oldest family of modern type in the order is that of the squirrels.

Let us begin with the rabbits and hares (family Leporidæ). The name properly applies to the Old World species Lepus cuniculus, the burrowing wild rabbit from which all our various domestic rabbits are descended, whose special characteristic is the fact that they live in holes in the ground of their own digging, and in large colonies called warrens. All the other species make their breeding beds and resting places on the surface of the ground, in the best concealment (outside of forests) that they can find. Such a home is called the animal's "form," and when it contains a litter of young the mother covers them with a blanket of hair which at that season she is shedding copiously. Strictly speaking, all the Leporidæ, except the cuniculus, are "hares"; but the general term "rabbit" is now so common that the scientific distinction is of no consequence. Europe and Asia have two kinds of hares, and several exist in this country, such as the familiar "cottontail" or bush rabbit of the east, the southern swamp rabbit, and several species of large, long-eared, swift-footed hares of the western plains called "jack rabbits." The most important one, however, is the large northern one named "snowshoe rabbit," because in winter it receives a broad growth of hair on the feet, aiding it in traveling over the snow. This rabbit turns white in winter, the hairs losing their color with the advent of cold, as also does the big arctic hare which wanders as far north as land extends. These northern hares are the chief dependence for food in winter of all the Canadian fur-bearing animals, and indirectly of the native Indians. Consequently when, as happens at intervals of a few years, the rabbits of a district all but wholly die off by an epidemic, a famine and dreadful distress occurs—or used to when civilized aid was less available than now—in northern Canada, and the commercial outcome of furs is greatly diminished.

As the hares feed on herbage and bark, obtainable all the year round, they are abroad in winter; but they have a family of small cousins, the pikas (Lagomyidæ) that inhabit our western mountain tops above timber line and must hibernate. Other species abound in the Himalayas. They are little, short-eared, tailless creatures that make their homes in companies among loose rocks, and store in their deep crevices enough dried grass and flowering plants to keep themselves alive until the late spring of those cold heights. Western folks call them conies.

The porcupines are large, plantigrade rodents notable for the mixture of quill-like spines with the hair. This is most conspicuous in the European species, which bristles with spines reaching far beyond the hips and concealing the tail, forming an excellent defensive armor. Some smaller African and East Indian species are less well armed, and have longer tails, at the end of which are tufts of spines, making an effective weapon. All of these pass their time and get their food on the ground. Our American porcupines (family Cercolabidæ) differ somewhat anatomically and live for the most part in trees, although our common eastern porcupine wanders about a great deal in summer, especially at night, feeding on herbage, and rejoicing in a find of bones or other saline food here and there. It is defended by a coat of long black hair in which spines are plentifully mingled, and the short, flat tail, covered with thick spines, may give a sidewise stroke that makes man or beast cautious about attacking an animal that otherwise seems so lethargic and helpless. The porcupines of this family, however, really belong to trees, where they slowly consume the foliage and tender bark, and remain quietly through even Canadian winters. The Pacific side of the country has a similar species in the yellow-haired porcupine; and several smaller kinds exist in Central and South America with scanty spines and long prehensile tails.

Closely allied to the porcupines are the gregarious viscachas of the South American plains, that live in "villages" of burrows, and much resemble prairie dogs in appearance and habits; also the chinchillas of the high levels of the Andes, whose soft gray coat is one of the prizes of the furrier. Here, too, come the swift-footed, slender agoutis and pacas of South America, many species of which exist and are useful as food; and a neighboring family contains the little cavies, from one of which are derived our pet "guinea pigs," which are not pigs and do not come from Guinea; also their cousin, the almost aquatic capybara, which measures three feet long, and so is the biggest known rodent. This is much hunted for its flesh, and is the principal prey of the jaguar.

This brings us to the world-wide tribe of rats and mice formed by a group of eight families, of which the typical one (Muridæ) alone contains a third of all Rodentia, and the other seven creatures differing greatly from these familiar models. Many are small, such as the house mouse (originally a native of southeastern Asia, as also were the rats that commerce has carried all over the civilized globe), and the even tinier harvest mice, gray or brown in plain color, and with long, slender and nearly hairless tails and legs fairly equal in size. Thence in size they grade up to the stature of the rat, and from that on to the South African "springhaas" which is as big as a rabbit, and to our muskrat, two feet long, counting in its tail. Although essentially alike in structure some have varied widely from the ordinary type. Thus the jerboas, several species of which inhabit the plains of Asia and Africa, have the hind legs so long that their bones are considerably longer than the distance from the root of the tail to the nose; and they progress in long rapid leaps, balancing themselves by long tails, often tufted at the end. The big "jumping hare" of South Africa has much the appearance of a kangaroo with a squirrellike tail; and a genus of exquisitely dressed mice in our sandy Southwest are called "kangaroo" mice. In fact one of our commonest reddish field mice, found all over the country, has similar proportions, and is remarkable for its long leaps when hurried.

A shortening of the tail is seen in the voles, to which the common meadow mice of various species belong, and still more in the lemmings, in the Old World mole rats, and in our pouched gophers. All these are not only ground-keeping kinds, but burrowers, and have no use for a long tail, save in the case of the muskrat, which is really a big vole that has taken to an aquatic life, and needs an oar to scull himself through the water; for muskrats swim more by means of their tails than by their feet. The foremost burrowers are the pouched gophers, whose long tunnels, and food-getting, do so much damage to crops in the central plains region of this country. They must be distinguished from the ground squirrels, also called "gophers."

An interesting diversity of habits may be met with here. Some rodents live in deeply excavated burrows, others in shallow diggings or holes in stumps and rock crevices; some, like the water voles, reside in holes in the banks of streams, or, like the muskrat, heap up "houses" in a marsh in which to pass the winter in security; while still others construct ball-like nests among the herbage, or in bushes and trees. Some truly hibernate in cold countries, like the famous dormice of Europe, and our equally sound sleeper, the American jumping mouse; but mostly they stay in snug habitations and live through the winter on collections of food, or, like field mice, gather seeds abroad even in the coldest weather, or poke about under the snow for food, as do the lemmings. From time to time certain species, especially of the short-tailed field mice and the lemmings, multiply excessively in some district, and then are forced to spread away from their birthplace in those migrations of myriads which form the "plagues" that devastate large tracts of country. They march on until an accumulation of enemies and an epidemic of illness combine to kill them off.

SQUIRRELS, WOODCHUCKS AND BEAVERS

Squirrels in form and activities are much alike all over the world, and are absent only from Australia and Madagascar. The long, bushy tail that makes so excellent a blanket as it is wrapped about their bodies when curled up asleep, is the badge and pride of the tribe. They inhabit hollows in the trees or sometimes holes among their roots, and in summer make globular nests of leaves and twigs in which the young are nursed and trained. Nuts form their staple food, but berries, fruits, roots, funguses, insect grubs, etc., offer changes in fare with the recurring seasons. Sometimes great ingenuity is displayed in getting at this food. Some species are arrant robbers of birds' nests, and now and then kill and eat small birds and mammals; and the older males are resolutely kept away from their babies by the mothers for fear of cannibalism. This catholic appetite, and their willingness to wander from place to place in search of things seasonable, enable squirrels to find food of some sort every month of the year, yet most species have the forethought to lay up in more or less secret places a winter supply of provender; consequently no species of Sciurus hibernates, strictly speaking.

This storing of winter provender is a matter that has been regarded with more general interest, perhaps, than any other feature of animal economy, and is mainly manifested among the rodents, although practiced in a limited way by some others, as for instance, by weasels and foxes. It looks like conscious foresight of the famine time to come, but it is no doubt in the main, if not wholly, instinctive, since the young, who have had no experience of the winter's scarcity or imprisonment ahead, make suitable preparations. It seems to me that this habit, so necessary to the existence of small, vegetarian creatures in cold climates, arose in some such way as this:

The little animals that store supplies designed to keep them alive through the winter are those whose food is for one reason or another unobtainable then. Remember, also, that they are feebly endowed with powers either for defense or for escape outside their homes, and when gathering their food must not loiter much to eat as they go, but must pick up what they can carry and hasten to the safety of their doorways. This is the reason why surviving species of such animals have acquired cheek pouches, in which they can transport a fair meal of their food to be eaten at home at leisure.

During the larger part of the year food is scant, and these rodents get into the way of picking up every bit they can find, and seem so restless and energetic that some of them, such as the viscachas and pack rats, accumulate about their burrows or nests quantities of inedible things, moved, apparently, by mere objectless acquisitiveness. The search for food, the foremost occupation and anxiety of these small wood-folk, would be increasingly stimulated as the ripening season of the seeds and nuts on which they depend advanced, and the impulse to incessant industry, so necessary in the poorer parts of the year, would now be overworked, and each animal, in his haste to be up and doing, would constantly bring home more food than would be consumed, so that it would pile up in the accustomed "dining room." The gradual failure of outdoor supplies, as winter came on, would lead to the eating, with increasing frequency, of those fragments casually saved in and about the burrow or house, which, from their nature, would not have decayed. The animal which had been most busy and clever in food gathering would own the largest amount of the leavings of these autumnal feasts. Having the most food he would be among those of the colony or neighborhood strongest and most likely to survive, and to give to his offspring the tendency to strength and industry which had been his salvation. This would be continued and shaped by the process of natural selection into a valuable, instinctive habit of gathering nonperishable food in large quantities every autumn, and thus providing themselves with stores to last through the coming winter; but it does not follow that the squirrels and mice are conscious of this wise forethought.

The striped, chattering, ever-busy chipmunks, of which America possesses several delightful species, although able to ascend into trees, and frequently doing so, are groundlings, and fond of rocky places into whose crevices they can quickly rush when an enemy is seen or heard; hence their fondness for the stone walls that in the East divide farm fields, and in general they are more inclined to associate with man and his works than are the tree squirrels, although the grays lend themselves readily to the semidomestication of residence in village streets and city parks, as the red never does. The chipmunks dig long underground tunnels, enlarged here and there into chambers serving as bedrooms, storerooms for food, and refuse bins; and the northwestern species are so numerous that between what they eat and waste in gardens and grainfields and the bad runways for water their galleries make, they are justly regarded as a pest.

These pretty but troublesome chipmunks are called "gophers" in some parts of the West, but that name is more generally given to the gray or brownish ground squirrels of the plains, classified as spermophiles by naturalists; and they are so varied, numerous and destructive wherever grain is grown, from the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska to the California valleys, and northward to the Saskatchewan, that extensive and costly poisoning operations are necessary to suppress them. Similar to them, but larger, are the prairie dogs, whose communities, or towns, of burrows and tunnels render useless large tracts of land in the southern half of the plains. Very similar animals to these abound in Russia and eastward throughout the open country of central Asia. They have undoubtedly increased much within late years through the killing off of the natural enemies that in the old days held their multiplication in check.

The prairie dogs used to be called "marmots," a term that applies more properly to some larger European burrowing rodents and to our woodchucks, which are so common all over the eastern half of the country, and, in another species, on the summits of the northern Rockies, where they are known as "whistlers." The most remarkable thing about them is the length and intensity of their dormancy in hibernation. There remains only the beaver, the largest of the rodents except the capybara, and altogether the most important one, measured by the value of its fur, and by the service its race has done through thousands of years in preparing, by its clearings and dams, valleys for man's cultivation.

Every beaver settlement is a true colony, the offspring of some previous settlement, which may be hundreds of years old. When such a settlement becomes too populous for the food supply, young males and their mates travel to some fresh spot by a small woodland stream, and begin life by digging a burrow in the bank with an underwater entrance, and at once dam up the stream by piling sticks, sod and mud across its current at some favorable spot below their home, the effect, if not the conscious purpose, of which is to maintain a depth of water in the stream at all seasons sufficient to cover the entrance to the burrow, and also to permit the storage of green wood under water (and ice) near the home for food (they eat the bark) during the next winter. The young beavers born that season will remain through the winter with the parents, and a domelike house is usually built in which the family lives. Next season the young set up a home for themselves near by, and so the colony grows. Beavers get most of their food by cutting down trees other than evergreens, and gnawing the bark. As the trees disappear near the bank, and the colony increases, the dam is enlarged so as to spread the set-back water over a wider territory; and later canals are cut deep into the woods, permitting far-away trees to be felled, and their pieces floated to the houses, especially in gathering the supply for winter. Old dams are sometimes 100 or more yards long, and are built with astonishing intelligence with reference to holding back a great breadth of water. These are diligently and skillfully repaired; and the houses become, in the course of years, big enough to accommodate three generations of beavers at once, and are so massive, especially when frozen in winter, which is the time of most danger from their enemies, that they are practically safe from attack. From such a mature colony others are continually formed, until in a level, swampy region the whole district is well occupied by beavers. This is possible now, of course, only in the remote Northwest; but a few beavers survive in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States, under protective laws, and they are still numerous in the more thinly settled parts of Canada, and furnish a large return to trappers.

CHAPTER XXIX
MAMMALS OF THE SEA

Whale is a general name for the extensive and varied order of marine mammals termed in science Cetacea. Their origin is obscure, but it is certain that their very ancient ancestors were land animals, evidence of which is afforded by their anatomy, especially in embryonic and very young specimens. Here are classified not only the great true whales but their smaller relatives, the sportive dolphins and porpoises, the grampuses or blackfish, the white whales often seen in the lower St. Lawrence River, the killers, and such out-of-the-way forms as the narwhal, from whose snout projects a long twisted "tusk," which is a strangely overgrown incisor tooth. In all these animals the shape is fishlike, as is required by the fishlike habits; the skin is smooth and usually blackish, or black with white markings; the forelimbs have become paddles and the tail a pair of horizontal flukes. As they are mammals with lungs and breathe air, whales must come to the surface frequently for that purpose. At the instant they emerge the pent-up air is expelled from the lungs through the nostrils at the top of the nose. In the case of the larger species this big discharge of moist breath condenses in the cold air into a visible vapor, often mixed with sea spray, which is called a "blowing"; but no water is expelled from the mouth, with which the "blowholes" have no connection. The smaller kinds of cetaceans, of which the variety is immense, are in the main fish-eaters, but the killer seizes and devours porpoises and seals also, and a band of them may unite to worry a big cachalot to death. Most species go about in small bands, or "schools."

The great whales are of two distinct families: (1) baleen whales, and (2) toothed whales. The first take their name from the blade-shaped plates of horny material (whalebone) hanging, to the number of two or three hundred, from the roof of the mouth, each central blade eight or ten feet long in ordinary cases. These "right" (i. e., proper) whales, as they are called by the men who hunt for and harpoon them, are huge creatures often fifty to seventy-five feet long, ranging all northern oceans, even amid arctic ice; yet, despite their bulk, they feed exclusively on the small crustaceans and other minute creatures of the plankton swept into the mouth by the million as the whale rushes along the surface, the water scooped up escaping from the sides of the mouth, and the food being caught by the fringes of baleen and swallowed like a continuous meal. In addition to the whalebone obtained from these whales the hunters cut away and save the thick layer of fat (blubber) under the skin for the sake of the oil it yields. The beeflike flesh of the muscles is good meat. This kind of whale is becoming very scarce.

The toothed whales consist of the single species called sperm whale, or "cachalot," which is of gigantic size, a lesser cousin ("kogia"), and an inferior genus, the beaked whales of the Antarctic. All are more common in the tropics and South Pacific than elsewhere. The great sperm whale differs in form from a "right" one mainly in having a huge, flattopped, almost square-fronted head, beneath which is hinged a somewhat shorter underjaw. The cavernous mouth is armed with strong, pointed teeth, and these whales prey on fish and especially on cuttlefish. They can swallow whole nothing larger than a salmon, but can bite larger prey into manageable pieces, and have more than once seized and crushed a boat in their jaws. The cachalot attacks the giant squid whenever it meets one and the marks of the squid's winding arms and cruel suckers are often seen on the hides of whales as scars of some struggle between these Titans of the deep. The value to mankind of the sperm whale lies in the liquid fat and the valuable substance, spermaceti, that fill a vast cavity in the top of its skull, a single whale yielding several barrels of it, from which the commercial "spermaceti" and a fine oil are extracted. In their intestines are frequently found lumps of the secretion known as "ambergris," used as a base for perfumes, the price of which is so high in the market that a few pounds will cover the expenses of a ship's voyage. Ambergris is also found floating in the open sea or cast up on shore, and for a long time its origin was unknown.

CHAPTER XXX
THE WORLD'S HERDS AND FLOCKS

The great tribe of animals called Ungulata ("hoofed") or Herbivora (eaters of herbage—herbivores), combines two types of structure into which they have diverged since their origin at the dawn of the Tertiary era, namely:

I. Odd-toed, or solid-hoofed, ungulates (Perissodactyla), typified by horses; and

II. Even-toed, or split-hoofed, ungulates (Artiodactyla), typified by the cattle.

They exist in every part of the habitable globe except Australasia, have furnished sustenance to the larger Carnivora, and have supplied the need of man for assistance in his labor, and with materials for food, shelter, and clothing. Without them modern civilization would have been impossible.

Both divisions have lost the plantigrade (flat-soled) walk of their early ancestors, and now step on the tips of their toes. This has been gradually gained as an adaptation to the increase of dry land and the formation of grassy plains, which we know went on steadily, especially through the last third of the Tertiary era. The short, massive legs and spreading, five-toed feet, useful in sustaining an animal's weight in marshes, were slowly changed to longer, more slender limbs and a digitigrade walk as greater speed and nimbleness were required in making their way over wide pastures to and from watering places or in escaping the beasts of prey, which were themselves becoming swifter and more active in jumping by a coordinate evolution of abilities. But before proceeding to the typical hoofed tribes, mention must be made of the elephants, which belong in this order. Elephants appear to stand apart from all other mammals, and from the earliest times have attracted attention by their huge bulk and strength, and by traditions of their intelligent performances. They seem a necessary part of our ideas of Oriental life and grandeur, and a circus without trick elephants would be a poor show in the eyes of the American youngster.

The naturalist classifies them (order Proboscidea) in this place because they are plainly, although remotely, related in structure to the solid-hoofed browsers; but only recently has he been able to trace their ancestry back to a small, tapirlike forefather of Miocene days, with no trunk and no tusks. The trunk, of course, is the animal's lengthened nose, become an organ useful for many purposes other than breathing; and the tusks are overgrown upper incisor teeth. The elephants of the present time are few compared with those of warmer past ages, when many species, as well as various cousins, such as long-haired mammoths and towering mastodons, wandered over Europe, Asia, and our own country. Now only two kinds remain: one in Africa, the other Asiatic. They differ in many ways, most noticeably in the size of the ears, which in the African elephant are very much larger than those of the Asiatic species. Both are forest animals, feeding on leaves and twigs. African elephants were formerly to be found all over the wooded parts of that continent, traveling about in herds that sometimes numbered a hundred or more individuals; and were varied in appearance, some being taller than any Oriental one, while others (in the Congo region) are so small as to be called dwarfs. The natives have never captured and made use of them, and few have been tamed by anyone within recent years, but in the time of the Carthaginians and Romans they were held captive, ridden, and employed in war, and in sports of the arena. They have been greatly reduced in numbers by ivory hunters, and would be nearly or quite extinct now had they not been protected in recent years by wise laws.

The Asiatic, or "Indian" elephant, which is confined to India, Ceylon, Burma, and the Malay countries, still roams the jungles as a wild animal, but every herd is known to and protected by the local governments, and from time to time these are rounded up, and young ones are captured and trained to man's service. Only in this way can the domestic supply be maintained, since these elephants rarely produce young when in captivity. They are utilized as riding and burden-bearing beasts, for hauling heavy loads, especially in the army service, and in handling large timber and other industrial operations. Some ivory is obtained from this species, but the tusks are far smaller than those of the African elephants, and the females bear none at all, while both sexes are armed in Africa, where an old "bull's" tusks have been known to exceed a weight of 300 pounds each.

Although there is no reason to suppose the African elephant is less intelligent by nature than the Oriental one, nearly all the evidence of thoughtfulness in these animals comes from Indian examples—a species that has been studied and educated for hundreds of years. That they may be taught to do almost anything of which their bodies are capable is plain; but undoubtedly they comprehend very largely the purposes of the man directing them, and use "brains" in assisting him to carry them out. They have retentive memories, appreciate kindness, and constantly show skill and discretion in accomplishing what they are asked to do. In regard to no other sort of animal has so much been written as of elephants; and the sum of the testimony is that they are not only very teachable and faithful in performing their tasks, when not disabled by fear, but often use surprisingly good judgment in their work.

Distantly related to the elephants, yet so remote in relationship to anything else as to be set apart in an order (Hyracoidea) by themselves, and with no visible geological ancestry, are the queer little "conies" of the Scriptures, called rock rabbits, and dassies in South Africa. They have a singular resemblance to rabbits, apart from their little round ears, and are more like enlarged copies of our western pikas, but their anatomy and teeth show they are far from being rodents; and they are classified here mainly by reason of their rhinoceroslike teeth, and the hooflets on their toes, so that they form a quaint intermediary between the elephants and the solid-hoofed section of the ungulates; they are, indeed, relics of an exceedingly primitive and ancestral type of ungulates.

RHINOCEROSES, TAPIRS AND HORSES

Included by their general anatomy among the perissodactyls, although they have several toes on each foot, all reaching the ground, and, like those of elephants, connected by webs and clothed with thick, hooflike nails, are the rhinoceroses and tapirs. The rhinoceroses are relics of a long and interesting geological history. Two belong to Africa, one of which, the common "black," browsing rhinoceros, is still abundant south of the equator in all the more open and less occupied parts, of the continent; while the other, the larger, square-lipped, grass-eating, or "white" rhinoceros, has become very rare save in certain remote and upland plains. Both have thick, hairless skins of a pale lead-gray, which lie smoothly over the whole body, and both have, on the nose, two horns, composed of matted, whalebonelike hairs, not a part of the skeleton but springing from the skin. The front horn is always much the longer, in some cases reaching a length of more than fifty inches. Asia has three species of rhinoceros, all of which differ from the African in having functional incisor teeth, and in their hides. The best known is the "Indian" rhinoceros, now confined to the hot jungles of the extreme northeast of India. It has only one horn, and its dark hide is thrown into heavy folds looking like artificial armor. It became known to Europe early in the sixteenth century, and became the subject for some of the most curious speculations and superstitions of that credulous age. The "Sondaic" or hairy rhinoceros still is to be found in jungles from Bengal around to the end of the Malayan Peninsula. It is smaller than the Indian one, and its folded and tesselated hide supports a coat of short hair; its horns are only two little protuberances on its nose. Finally Sumatra and Borneo have a rhinoceros whose coat is still more hairy, and among whose peculiarities is the possession of two formidable horns. These creatures are perhaps the best examples remaining of what Merck's rhinoceros (fossil) and other big quadrupeds of the Pleistocene era looked like.

The tapirs are even more widely separated in habitat than the rhinoceroses, for four species dwell in the New World between Guatemala and southern Brazil and Guiana, while the fifth belongs to Malaysia. They are forest animals, and mainly browsers, the long, almost trunklike nose and lips enabling them to seize and tear off leaves and twigs easily. They choose low districts, as a rule, and rush into the safety of water when in danger from the jaguar or other beasts. They are shaped somewhat like a very fat pony, but with a big, pointed head, and are clothed with short hair of plain dark tints, but the young are spotted at first. They are timid, secretive and nocturnal in their habits. Their flesh is excellent meat.

This brings us to the horses, whose geological history is one of the romances of natural history, as it is traced from the little five-toed eohippus of the Eocene up to the herds that roamed our western prairies, and disappeared so completely, and so unaccountably, in the era just preceding the present. Our domestic horses, consequently, are all of Old World origin. As far back as man can be traced in his supposed birthplace in central Asia herds of small horses fed upon those high plains; and about fifty years ago bands of ponies were discovered ranging the dreary deserts of Dzungaria, or northwestern Chinese Turkestan, and specimens are now living and breeding in the Zoölogical Park in New York and in European collections. This truly wild horse stands about ten hands high, and is covered with thick hair of a dull brown color, unstriped.