1833.] FOOD OF LARGE QUADRUPEDS. 63 



amount of food necessary for the support of large quadrupeds are much 

 exaggerated ; it should have been remembered that the camel, an 

 animal of no mean bulk, has always been considered as the emblem of 

 the desert. 



The belief that where large quadrupeds exist, the vegetation must 

 necessarily be luxuriant, is the more remarkable, because the converse 

 is far from true. Mr. Burchell observed to me that when entering 

 Brazil, nothing struck him more forcibly than the splendour of the 

 South American vegetation contrasted with that of South Africa, to- 

 gether with the absence of all large quadrupeds. In his Travels,* he 

 has suggested that the comparison of the respective weights (if there 

 were sufficient data) of an equal number of the largest herbivorous 

 quadrupeds of each country would be extremely curious. If we take 

 on the one side, the elephant.f hippopotamus, giraffe, bos caffer, elan, 

 certainly three, and probably five species of rhinoceros; and on the 

 American side, two tapirs, the guanaco, three deer, the vicuna, peccari, 

 capybara (after which we must choose from the monkeys to complete 

 the number), and then place these two groups alongside each other, it 

 is not easy to conceive ranks more disproportionate in size. After the 

 above facts, we are compelled to conclude against anterior probability,} 

 that among the mammalia there exists no close relation between the 

 bulk of the species, and the quantity of the vegetation, in the countries 

 which they inhabit. 



With regard to the number of large quadrupeds, there certainly exists 

 no quarter of the globe which will bear comparison with Southern 

 Africa. After the different statements which have been given, the 

 extremely desert character of that region will not be disputed. In the 

 European division of the world, we must look back to the tertiary 

 epochs, to find a condition of things among the mammalia, resembling 



* "Travels in th^Tnterior of South Africa," vol. ii., p. 207. 



f The elephant which was killed at Exeter Change was estimated (being 

 partly weighed) at five tons and a half. The elephant actress, as I was in- 

 formed, weighed one ton less ; so that we may take five as tne average of a 

 full-grown elephant. I was told at the Surrey Gardens, that a hippopotamus 

 which was sent to England cut up into pieces was estimated at three tons 

 and a half; we will call it three. From these premises we may give three 

 tons and a half to each of the five rhinoceroses ; perhaps a ton to the giraffe, 

 and half to the bos caffer as well as to the elan (a large ox weighs from 1,200 

 to 1,500 pounds). This will give an average (from the above estimates) of 

 2'7 of a ton for the ten largest herbivorous animals of Southern Africa. In 

 South America, allowing 1,200 pounds for the two tapirs together, 550 for 

 the guanaco and vicuna, 500 for three deer, 300 for the capybara, peccari, 

 and a monkey, we shall have an average of 250 pounds, which I believe is 

 overstating the result. The ratio will therefore be as 6,048 to 250, or 24 to 

 I, for the ten largest animals from the two continents. 



\ If we suppose the case of the discovery of a skeleton of a Greenland 

 whale in a fossil state, not a single cetaceous animal being known to exist, 

 what naturalist would have ventured conjecture on the possibility of a car- 

 cass so gigantic being supported on the minute Crustacea and mollusca 

 Hving in the frozen seas of the extreme North ? 



