Excerpt from History of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere No one who has not examined it, can form any conception of the enormous mass and variety of material, illustrating the history of American mammals, which has already been gathered into the various museums. A full account of this material would require many volumes, and one of the chief problems in the preparation of this book has been that of making a proper selection of the most instructive and illuminating portions of the long and com plicated story. Indeed, so rapid is the uninterrupted course of discovery, that parts of the text became antiquated while in the press and had to be rewritten. As first prepared, the work proved to be far too long and it was necessary to excise several chapters, for it seemed better to cover less ground than to make the entire history hurried and superficial. The plan of treatment adopted involves a considerable amount of repetition, but this is perhaps not a disadvantage, since the same facts are considered from different points of View. The facts which are here brought together have been asoer tained by many workers, and I have borrowed with the greatest freedom from my fellow labourers in the field of palaeontology. As every compiler of a manual finds, it is not feasible to attribute the proper credit to each discoverer. Huxley has so well explained the situation in the preface to his Anatomy of Vertebrated Ani mals, that I may be permitted to borrow his words: I have intentionally refrained from burdening the text with references and, therefore, the reader, while he is justly entitled to hold me responsible for any errors he may detect, will do well to give me no credit for what mav seem original, unless his knowledge is sufficient to render him a competent judge on that head. A book of this character is obviously not the proper place for polemical discussions of disputed questions. Whenever, there fore, the views expressed differ widely from those maintained by other palaeontologists, I have attempted no more than to state, as fairly as I could, the alternative interpretations and my own choice between them. Any other course was forbidden by the limitations of space. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.