MAMMALIA ABUNDANT. 



89 



theatre of an extensive creation of the highest class of animals. 

 Cuvier ascertained about fifty species of these, all of them long 

 since extinct. About four-fifths are of the order Pachyder- 

 mata, thick-skinned animals, to which our modern elephant, 

 rhinoceros, horse, and pig, belong. Nearly the whole of these, 

 however, belong to a family which is now confined to South 

 America and Sumatra, namely, the tapir, an animal of squat 

 figure, and possessing a short proboscis, an inhabitant of the 

 woods, and a herbivore, but of unsocial habits. It is curious 

 to find that a family now so limited in its range, had formerly 

 been distributed over France, England, and other parts of the 

 earth. Naturalists have conferred the names Palceotherium, 



FIG. 64. 



Skeleton of Palceotherium magnum. 



LopUodon, Coryphodon, &c., upon the ancient extinct tapirs, 

 which seem chiefly to differ from modern species in a few 

 peculiarities of the constitution of the teeth, and in haying 

 three, instead of four toes, upon the fore feet. One British 

 specimen seems to have been about a third larger than the 

 modern animal. 



Another section of the Paris eocene remains have served to 

 reconstruct a family to which the general name Anoplotherium 

 has been given, from regard to its deficiency of all offensive or 

 defensive weapons. These are the first examples of bi-hooved 

 animals as yet discovered upon earth ; they were strictly her- 



