Page:The Mexican Problem (1917).djvu/194

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134
THE MEXICAN PROBLEM

the mastodon, the bison, the horse, the camel, the bear, the coyote, and the giant wolf are mounted or are being mounted for the Museum of History, Science and Art in the Exposition Park of Los Angeles, and there are fifteen thousand boxes of bones still unassorted. As many as thirty skulls of the saber-tooth tiger or cat, together with fifty skulls of the giant wolf, were found in a space of less than four cubic yards.

Mother Earth here hermetically sealed up the animal life of many hundred years ago, and the museum and the ranch La Brea, of twenty-five acres, now the property of the State, will be of interest to the scientist and the student for many hundred years to come. From this place came the skull and skeleton of a woman eight thousand years old. Many animal contests must have occurred about this water and tar hole, for animal bones are found chewed, and some partially healed.

To Doheny, the man of the plain and the mountain, deep and broad delver in Mother Earth, these bones, the life of the past they reveal for man, beast and vegetable life, have the deepest interest; for Doheny seems to have the genius's insight into the history of the past,