249 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



RODENTS continued — HTRACID^'E, or LAMXtrXGIA. 



JTyrax, or Damak. (Map 45.*) The species composing this genus or family are a few small 

 animals, no larger than Rabbits, and not nnlike them, although more compact and clumsy. They are 

 said to be good to eat. The Syrian species is pretty generally believed to be the Saphan, or Coney 

 of the Old Testament. 



The genus is one of the most difficult to place of any of the mammals. It is either a Rodent or a 

 Pachyderm, but seems to have as many claims to be considered the one as the other. Besides the 

 form of the Rodents, it has theii' habits, their dung, their skin, hair, nostrils, eyes, ears, tail, 

 incisors, most of the muscles, and some parts of the internal organs. On the other hand, it has the 

 molars of the Rhinoceros — at least they simulate them very closely ; but it is well to remember that 

 the folds and repKcations of enamel in some of the Rodents might, if a little exaggerated, produce 

 a very good resemblance to a pachydermatous molar ; moreover, De Blainville does not interpret 

 them as Cuvier did. The skull, especially behind, resembles that of the Rhinoceros ; the humerus, 

 the dorsal vertebra;, and, generally speaking, the whole skeleton comes nearer to that of the 

 Rhinoceros than to that of any known Rodent. It was classed by Linnaeus and the old 

 authors with the Rodents, but Cuvier removed it from them and placed it among the Pachyderms, 

 where it has ever since remained : not through inadvertence or simple deference to the great man's 

 opinion, for its position has again and again been keenly scrutinized by our first anatomists ; 

 but from a conviction that a jjreponderance of the pachydermatous element does really exist in it. 

 The discover)' of the fossil remains of extinct palseotheroid animals holding an intermediate 

 position between it and the Pachj-derms, and participating in the characters of both, no doubt nuist 

 have had much weight in turning the scale in the minds of modern naturalists, and in maintaining 

 its place among the species of that order. 



De BlainvlUe seems only to have been half a convert, and if Professor Owen adopts without 

 reservation the view that it is a pachyderm, it may be partly due to his liking for recondite discoveries. 

 He says, that " ia the course of his experience he has often found that the prominent appearances 

 which first catch the eye and indicate a conformable conclusion are dece]itivc>, and that the less obtru- 

 sive phenomena which require searching out, more frequently, when tlieir full significance is reasoned 

 up to, guide to the right comprehension of the whole. If is as if truth were whispered rather than 

 outspoken by Nature." f 



* The reader must go back to the maps of the Pachy- the genus from its prescriptive place, 

 demis for this map. It was lithographed among them f Owen, " Palajoutology," p. 'A-l'i. 1860. 



before I had mustered courage to propose the removal of 



