On some Quadrupeds supposed to be extinct. 361 



France, Germany, and Italy *. The remains of a tapir being 

 found at Florence, with those of other quadrupeds usually 

 exhibited by the Romans, was an unaccountable fact, till it 

 was known, through Sir Stamford Raffles, that the tapir exists 

 in Sumatra. , We know that the Romans carried on, a com- 

 merce with India, which employed one hundred and twenty 

 ships annually f and that they had the power of being supplied 

 with all the animals of those regions, by means of country 

 ships, which traded to the ports of Musiris and Barace, those 

 which the Romans frequented. Moreover, the author of the 

 Periplus, p. 36, describes Sumatra. It appears, therefore, 

 evident that the Romans procured tapirs from that island, if 

 they be not inhabitants of Africa. The British king, father of 

 Caractacus, had a tapir on one of his numerous coins f; which 

 may be reckoned among many other proofs that the ancient 

 Britons were not quite so ignorant and barbarous as is gene- 

 rally, but unjustly, imagined. The discovery of this tapir shows 

 how little is yet known even of those countries in which Britain 

 has, for a length of years, had establishments. The tapir is 

 probably what the natives have reported as a river-horse, a 

 much more appropriate name for it than for the African beast. 

 ** The descriptions of the hippopotamus," says Baron Cuvier, 

 ** by Herodotus and Aristotle, are supposed to have been bor- 

 rowed from Hecataeus of Miletus, and must have been taken 

 from two very different animals, one of which is the true hip- 

 popotamus, and the other the antelope gnu of GmelinJ." 

 Now, as it appears that the Indians described by Herodotus 

 by the name Padcei, is an exact account of the Batta in Su- 

 matra, — (Dr. Leyden thinks them the same word, as the Indo- 

 Chinese pronounce B as P§,) — it is rendered probable that that 

 island was known to the Greeks, long before the Romans pos- 

 sessed Egypt. On these grounds, I venture a conjecture that 

 Aristotle and Herodotus alluded to the tapir, which is amphi- 

 bious, but the gnu is not. The tapir is probably the A:wc?a- 

 ayer of Sumatra, and the conda-aijeer, or rivier paardj of the 



* Cuvier, Theory of the Earth, p. 257. 



•)• Conq. of Peru, &c. plate iv. 



t Theory of the Earth, p. 67. 



^S Herodotus, Thalia xcix. Rees's Cyc, " Sumatra." :.• > - 



