While the Sequoia was first
emerging from the Carboniferous, or Coal Period, the reptile-like
ancestors of these mammals, covered with scales and of egg-laying
habits, were crawling about and giving not the most remote prophecy of
their potential transformation through 10,000,000 of years into the
superb fauna of the northern hemisphere.
The descendants of these reptiles were transformed into mammals. If we
had had the opportunity of studying the early mammals of the Rocky
Mountain region with a full appreciation of the possibilities of
evolution, we should have perceived that they were essentially of the
same stock and ancestral to our modern types. There were little camels
scarcely more than twelve inches high, little taller than cotton-tail
rabbits and smaller than the jackass rabbits; horses 15 inches high,
scarcely larger than, and very similar in build to, the little English
coursing hound known as the whippet; it is not improbable that we shall
find the miniature deer; there certainly existed ancestral wolves and
foxes of similarly small proportions.
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