y did the land under the western portion of the sea slowly rise until the waters were completely closed in on the west, and the sea thus made that much narrower, but the rise of the land on the south cut off connection with the great salt ocean which surrounds the continents to-day. So the salt-water fish, for lack of salt water, died, and with them the monsters like the Ichthyosaurus that lived on the salt-water fish that lived in this salt sea.

But it wasn't alone that the seas grew narrower and more shallow because of the elevation of the lands. The mountains rising in the west, cut off the rain-laden winds which blew from the Pacific in those days just as they do now. Thus the seas dried up so much the faster. But first, before the sea went entirely dry, its place was taken by the lakes and swamps into which it shrivelled up. Low, swampy land is just what reptiles like, so this was their Golden Age, just as the previous time of the wide, deep sea was the Golden Age of the big fish and the fish-lizards.

Then, as the land still rose and the climate grew dryer, the reptiles passed away, and in came the mammal family, to which the cows and the horses and the cats and the kittens, and all the rest of us, belong.

[Pg 33]

TOO MUCH BRAWN, TOO LITTLE BRAIN

Of course, even where they didn't die with their boots on, so to speak, as so many of them did in those lawless days, there came a time for each monster, in the order of nature, when he drew his last breath. But what seems so strange is that all th