TAPIR. 127 



approaching the one-toed ideal, the tapir has remained 

 unchanged. A rhinoceros-like animal, with the awe- 

 inspiring name of titanotherium, a contemporary of 

 the tapir in the Miocene period, also reached the stage 

 of having four toes to the fore-foot and three toes to 

 the hind-foot. The titanotherium has passed away, 

 but the tapir is still with us. 



Then, too, the tapir's little proboscis, a mere elonga- 

 tion of the upper lip and snout, with the nostrils at its 

 extremities, seems to be only an early rudimentary 

 effort to attain a feature which has reached such high 

 development in the elephant. It is true that it is 

 useful to pluck a bunch of leaves or a tuft of grass, 

 but it gives the animal the ridiculous appearance of 

 wearing a false nose. Weirdly primitive, too, is the 

 coloration of the Malay species. The head, shoulders, 

 and fore-feet are a jet glossy black, the body is pure 

 white, and the hind -legs are jet black. The two 

 colours do not in any way melt into one another 

 where they meet ; on the contrary, the line of demar- 

 cation between the white and the black is most boldly 

 and vividly drawn. 



At its birtli the baby tapir, a most laughable little 

 caricature of its ungainly parents, is striped from head 

 to foot with narrow bands of yellow and brown. 1 



1 In this respect the young tapir resembles the young of the wild 

 pig, an animal with which, inasmuch as the one is an odd-toed and 

 the other an even-toed animal, it is in no way connected. The 

 stripes are particularly interesting, for the theory of recapitulation 

 namely, that in the embryo and young of an animal is recapitulated 

 the history of that animal's evolution would lead us to believe that 

 the adult tapir was once striped, and therein resembled other 

 members of the odd-toed group, such as the zebras and, perhaps, the 

 primitive horses. 



