THE MALAY TAPIR J 47 



take a clicks of a coin by firmly pressing on it with 

 tinfoil. These " recent antediluvians " are found in 

 Asia and America and are known as tapirs. 



Modern tapirs are all stoutly built animals of 

 medium size. The nose is prolonged into a short 

 trunk ; the eyes are small, pig-like, and deeply set in 

 the head ; the ears are rounded and rather short. 

 The feet are broad, the anterior pair having four 

 toes apiece, the hinder three ; the tail is an incon- 

 spicuous rudiment. There are forty-two teeth, or 

 only two less than in the palaeothere ; beasts indis- 

 tinguishable from tapirs occur in the Upper and 

 Middle Tertiary rocks of Europe and America, and 

 in the Pleistocene caverns of Brazil. Of living 

 species four inhabit South America; the fifth is the 

 subject of this essay — the Malay or East Indian 

 tapir. 



The Malay tapir ( Tapirus indictts) — -maiba, tenok, 

 and tennu of the Malays^ — stands from three to three 

 and a half feet at the shoulder, and measures about 

 eight feet from nose to tail. The largest of all tapirs, 

 it agrees with the American forms in general out- 

 lines, but is remarkable for the greater length of 

 the trunk and for the absence of the comb of sinewy 

 fat which surmounts the nape of the neck. The 

 Malay tapir is, perhaps, the most strangely coloured 



H Sir Stamford Raffles distinctly states tliat tlie tennu is the Malay 

 tapir : Dr. J. E. Gray, liowever, sug^e^ted that it was an unknown 

 species of rhinoceros, since the beast was originally described as encircled 

 with a narrow wiiitish belt and bearing a single horn (? — proboscis). 



