252 THE STOKY OF THE EAETH AND MAN. 



is not its most remarkable feature. It has two large 

 tusks firmly implanted in strong bony sockets; but 

 they are attached to the end of the lower jaw and 

 point downward at right angles to it, so that the 

 lower jaw forms a sort of double-pointed pickaxe of 

 great size and strength. This might have been used 

 as a weapon; or, if the creature was aquatic, as a 

 grappling iron to hold by the bank, or by floating 

 timber; but more probably it was a grubbing-hoe 

 for digging up roots or loosening the bases of trees 

 which the animal might afterward pull down to devour 

 them. However this may be, the creature laboured 

 under the mechanical disadvantage of having to lift 

 an immense weight in the process of mastication, and 

 of being unable to bring its mouth to the ground, or 

 to bite or grasp anything with the front of its jaws. 

 To make up for this, it had muscles of enormous 

 power on the sides of the head attached to great 

 projecting processes ; and it had a thick but flexible 

 proboscis, to place in its mouth the food grubbed up 

 by ifcs tusks. Taken altogether, the Dinothere is per- 

 haps the most remarkable of mammals, fossil or re- 

 cent ; and if the rest of its frame were as extraordi- 

 nary as its skull, we have probably as yet but a faint 

 conception of its peculiarities. We may apply to it, 

 with added force, the admiring ejaculation of Job, 

 when he describes the strength of the hippopotamus, 

 " He is the chief of the ways of God. He who made 

 him, gave him his sword/' 



In Asia, the Siwalik hills afforded to Falconer and 



