“The shaft of the ulna,” writes Professor Huxley, “is stouter than in Hipparion, and is less closely united with the radius. The fibula appears—at any rate, in some cases—to have been a complete though slender bone, the distal end of which is still closely united with the tibia, though much more distinct than in the Hipparions and Horses. In some specimens, however, the middle of the shaft seems to have been incompletely ossified. Not only are there three toes in each foot, as in Hipparion, but the inner and the outer toes are so large that they must have rested upon the ground. Thus, so far as the limbs are concerned, the Anchitherium is just such a step beyond the Hipparion as the Hipparion is beyond the Horse, in the direction of a less specialised quadruped. The teeth are still more divergent from the Equine type. The incisors are smaller in proportion, and their crowns lack the peculiar pit which characterises those of Equus and Hipparion. The first grinder is proportionally much larger, especially in the upper jaw, and, like the other six, has a short crown and no thick coat of cement. The pattern of their crowns is wonderfully simplified. The fore and hind-ridges run with but a short obliquity across the crown, and the pillars are little more than enlargements of the ridges, while in the lower jaw these pillars have almost entirely disappeared. But the foremost of the six principal grinders is still somewhat larger than the rest, and the posterior lobe of the last lower molar is small, as in the other Equidæ.”
In all those respects in which Anchitherium departs from the modern Equine type it approaches that of the extinct Palæotheria; and this is so much the case that Cuvier considered the remains of the Anchitherium, with which he was acquainted, to be those of a species of Palæotherium. From these considerations it may be concluded that the highly specialised Horse has obtained its characteristics by descent from the Hipparion, and that again from the Anchitherium. In some cases on record there is a reversion towards the ancestral type, Horses having been born with tridactyle feet, similar in every respect to those of the Hipparion.
The lineage of the Horse is traceable yet further back by the discoveries of Marsh and Cope in New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah, in North America, up to the Eohippus of the Lower Eocene, a small animal not larger than a Fox, and with three toes on the hind foot and four and a rudiment of a fifth on the fore foot. It must further be noted that the fossil Horses increased in size as they lost their toes, and that the living Horse is the biggest of the family.
CHAPTER II.
PERISSODACTYLA—THE TAPIR AND RHINOCEROS FAMILIES.
Introductory Remarks on the Tapirs—Foot—Anatomical Features—Skull—Compared with that of Hog—Skull of Asiatic Tapir—Proboscis—Dentition—Species of Tapir—[THE AMERICAN TAPIR]—Habits—Colour—Modes of Hunting—Docility—[THE HAIRY TAPIR]—[THE MALAYAN TAPIR]—[FOSSIL TAPIRS]—[THE RHINOCEROSES]—General Characteristics—Is it the Reèm of the Bible?—Ludicrous Ideas respecting it—At Rome—First Rhinoceroses in Europe—Skeleton—Skull—Horns—Curious Dental Law—Fore and Hind Limbs—Dentition—[AFRICAN RHINOCEROSES]—[“WHITE” RHINOCEROS]—[OSWELL’S RHINOCEROS]—[BLACK RHINOCEROS]—[KEITLOA]—[RHINOCEROS BICORNIS MINOR]—Hunting—Sir Samuel Baker’s Extraordinary Chase—Gordon Cumming’s Account of the Characteristics and Habits of the Black and White South African Rhinoceroses—Rhinoceros Birds—[THE ASIATIC RHINOCEROSES]—Connection between Dentition and Horns—[THE INDIAN RHINOCEROS]—An Inveterate Enemy of the Elephant—[THE JAVAN RHINOCEROS]—[THE SUMATRAN RHINOCEROS]—[THE HAIRY-EARED RHINOCEROS]—How a Specimen, “Begum,” was Captured—[THE FOSSIL RHINOCEROSES]—The Extinct Families Palæotheridæ and Macraucheniadæ.
II.—THE TAPIRIDÆ (FAMILY OF TAPIRS).
THE Hog-like creatures which constitute the family of Tapirs form the second division of the quadrupeds which are possessed of three toes on their hind feet, and are therefore termed, as has already been said, the Perissodactyla. It must not, however, be forgotten that these creatures possess a fourth toe on the fore foot, which is small and does not reach to the ground. The family is represented by one genus only—Tapirus—which is distributed over wide regions in the warmer parts of the Old and the New Worlds. All the animals comprised under it possess short and movable trunks, by which they convey their food into their mouths, and at the extremity of which are placed the nostrils. They are of a brownish-black colour; the skin is hairy and extremely thick, and the tail is very short.
FORE (A) AND HIND (B) FOOT OF TAPIR. (After Murie.)