And first, many thanks for your close observation in detecting the two
absurd mistakes in the tabular headings.
As to the former greater distinction of the North and South American
faunas, I think I am right. The Edentata, being proved (as I hold) to
have been mere temporary migrants into North America in the
post-Pliocene epoch, form no part of its Tertiary fauna. Yet in South
America they were so enormously developed in the Pliocene epoch that we
know, if there is any such thing as Evolution, etc., that strange
ancestral forms must have preceded them in Miocene times.
Mastodon, on the other hand, represented by one or two species only,
appears to have been a late immigrant into South America from the North.
The immense development of Ungulates (in varied families, genera, and
species) in North America during the whole Tertiary epoch is, however,
the great feature, which assimilates it to Europe and contrasts it with
South America. True camels, hosts of hog-like animals, true
rhinoceroses, and hosts of ancestral horses, all bring North America
much nearer to the Old World than it is now.
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