ITS NEAKEST EXISTING KELATIONS. 51 



marked with spots and longitudinal stripes of white 

 or fawn color on a darker ground. 



The habits of all the kinds of tapirs appear to be 

 very similar. They are solitary, nocturnal, shy, and 

 inoffensive, chiefly frequenting the depths of shady 

 forests and the neighborhood of water, to which they 

 frequently resort for the purpose of bathing, and in 

 which they often take refuge when pursued. They 

 feed on various vegetable substances, as shoots of 

 trees and bushes, buds and leaves. They are hunted 

 by the natives of the land in which they live for the 

 sake of their hides and flesh. 



" The tapirs," Wallace says, " form a small group 

 of mammals, whose discontinuous distribution plainly 

 indicates their approaching extinction." This view 

 is supported, and the singular fact of the existence 

 of so closely allied animals as the Malayan and the 

 American tapirs in such distant regions of the earth 

 and in no intervening places, is accounted for by 

 what is known of the geological history of the race 

 for, if we may judge from the somewhat scanty re- 

 mains which have been preserved to our times, con- 

 sisting chiefly of teeth, the tapirs must once have 

 had a very wide distribution. There is no proof of 

 their having lived in the Eocene epoch ; but by the 

 Middle Miocene, tapirs undistinguishable generically 

 from those now existing were already formed, so 



