Liberia '*-' 



The Chevrotains constitute the family of Tragulid<e. It 

 is dangerous to speak of any existing animal as a " connecting 

 link " between one genus or family and another, because, 

 although the world is full of arrested developments at every 



stage amongst the mani- 

 festations of life, very 

 {cvf forms, even with a 

 pedigree stretching back 

 to the Secondary or 

 Primary Epochs, have 

 come down to us at the 

 present day absolutely 

 unaltered. But with this 

 reservation it might be 

 said to the general reader 

 that the Chevrotains or 

 Tragulina — especially in 

 the form of their most 

 generalised archaic repre- 

 sentative, the water chev- 

 rotain of West Africa — - 

 are very near to the in- 

 termediate types of even- 

 toed ungulate which con- 

 nect the Pig and the 

 Camel groups with the 

 Pecora (deer, giraffes, an- 

 telopes, oxen, and sheep). The Pecora, together with the 

 camels and the tragulids, form a great sub-order of living and 

 extinct ungulates called the Selenodontia or the Ruminantia ^ in 



' This word means crescent-like teeth, and is given to these ungulates because 

 their molar teeth develop on the grinding surface a series of crescentic folds. 



722 



280. FORE-LEG OF WATER CHEVROTAIN 



