438 ANOPLOTHERIUM. 
2. A. secundarium. Similis preecedenti, sed statura 
Suis.” 
The common Anoplothere was eight feet long, including 
the tail, and four feet and a half without the tail; the 
body being about as long as that of a common Ass, but 
less elevated from the ground; the height to the withers 
being probably little more than three feet. The long and 
powerful tail must have formed the chief peculiarity im the 
living animal’s outward form, and must have been of the 
same service to it in swimming, as the tail of the Coypu 
and the Otter. Cuvier concludes, therefore, that the ex- 
tinct aquatic Herbivore swam the ancient lakes of the 
rising European continent, like the Water Vole and the 
Hippopotamus, in quest of the succulent roots and stems 
of aquatic plants ;* but we may pause and remark on this 
conjecture, that the Anoplothere possessed neither the 
chisel-shaped incisors of the one for gnawing through such 
roots and stems, nor the great projecting tusks of the other 
for uprooting and tearing them from the soil; on the con- 
trary, its small, equable and well-opposed upper and lower 
incisors would indicate that it cropped grass like a horse, 
and the close resemblance of the molars in the pattern of 
their grinding surface to those of the Ruminants and horse 
tribe, strengthens the probability that the Anoplothere 
came on land to browse or graze. 
The existence of many destructive Carnivora at that 
early period of Mammalian life may partly explain the 
advantage to the Anoplotherium commune of its power of 
taking shelter in the water, especially as it wanted the 
means of rapid flight enjoyed by some of its congeners with 
long and slender limbs—as, for example, the Anoplotherium 
* “ J] allait done chercher les racines et les tiges succulentes des plantes aqua- 
tiques.”—Cuv. loc. cit. tom. iii. p. 247. 
