“Some races of men have gone already,” the other answered. “The pygmies are dying fast, the last of the giant Patagonians died less than a hundred years ago, the last Tasmanian closed his race in 1876, and the flame of the North American Indian is flickering out. The skulls of the men we find in the flint beds of the Ice Age are greatly different from those of any man of to-day. Suppose, Perry, a new Age of Cold should come, all the negroes would die out. If the whole climate of the world grew hotter, so that not even the Temperate Zones were any cooler than the tropics are to-day, the white race would die out and the negro would take its place. In food alone, Man is safe, for he eats both flesh and vegetable food and has brain enough to hunt the one and to cultivate the other.”
Perry waited until Antoine had finished the sentence, then, standing on his stirrups, he waved his hat and raised a “Hello!” to his uncle, who was cantering toward the camp from another direction.
“Why, where have you been, you two rovers?” queried the professor, cheerily, as they came within speaking distance. “We expected you at lunch time. I even came into camp for lunch to be there when you arrived.”
“We met an awfully jolly cowboy and he took us to a Hyrachyus, Uncle George!” the boy burst out. “Oh, it’s a peach, standing up there in a rock just as if it were going to gallop out!”
Antoine was just as excited as the lad, and just as eager to tell the story, but his manner was less exuberant.
“I think it really is a good specimen, Dr. Hunt,” he said, “but I’m afraid it will be quite difficult to remove.”
“You think the skeleton is complete?”
“Of course,” the Belgian answered, “it’s impossible to say until the matrix is removed, but I think, from the position of the bones, that the Hyrachyus was mired, and so the complete skeleton is likely to be in place.”
“Your discovery is almost an exact duplicate of the manner in which the first known Hyrachyus was found,” the scientist remarked, “the famous specimen discovered by Cope. Evidently Hyrachyus seems to have had poor judgment in telling when a place was safe or not. A really good Hyrachyus! Yes, that’s worth while. What was the condition of the skull, Antoine?”
The younger paleontologist immediately plunged into an exact description, while Perry marveled at the amount of detailed information his friend had secured during the few moments, when, standing on the saddle, he had made a brief examination of the skull.