THE AMERICAN BISON 



201 



from remains found in the gypsum beds of Paris, and 

 named by him Anoplotherium. One of its most singular 

 peculiarities consisted in the arrangement and proportion 

 of its teeth, of which it had forty-four, those of each jaw 

 being arranged in an unbroken series all of the same 

 height an arrangement which is found in no existing 

 animal whatever, except man. Similarly, tertiary deposits 

 in America, India, and Europe seem to show that the 

 distinction we now find between pigs and peccaries had 

 not then arisen. The range of various forms was also 



FIG. 55. 



THE BRAZILIAN TAPIR. 



widely different. The hippopotamus is now strictly 

 confined to Africa, where, besides the common form, 

 there is a pigmy species on the western side of that 

 continent. But in later tertiary times the hippopotamus 

 existed in India and in England ; while small species 

 have left their bones in great quantities in the islands 

 of Sicily and Malta. Similarly, as before said, that, in 

 our days, exclusively African form, the giraffe, once existed 

 in Greece, as well as in Persia, India, and China. 



As to our type, the bison of North America, remains 

 of a now extinct form have been found, as before said, 

 in Texas, and that has been thought to be the ancestor 



