272 ZOOLOGY. 



foot being supported by thick, broad pads. The legs are 

 almost wholly free from the body. The placenta is zonary 

 and deciduate. The skin is naked in the existing ele- 

 phants, but the extinct mammoth was covered sparsely 

 with long hairs. Elephants live in herds, browsing on the 

 leaves of trees and herbs. They attain a height of from 

 three to four metres (10-12 feet), but are rarely over nine 

 feet in height. The Asiatic elephant has a concave fore- 

 head and small ears, while the African species has a full, 

 rounded forehead and large ears, with four hoofs on the 

 fore feet and three on the hind feet, the Asiatic elephant 

 having one more hoof on each foot. The fossil mammoth 

 (Elephas prim i genius, Fig. 308), which was contempora- 

 neous with early man, was not much larger than the exist- 

 ing species. Its tusks, however, were of great size, some 

 being five metres long, It formerly ranged in herds over 

 northern Europe and Asia, as well as America, bones occur- 

 ring under swamps in the Northern and Middle United 

 States. A carcass frozen in the ice, with the hair still on, 

 was discovered near the mouth of the Lena River in Siberia. 

 A pygmy, extinct Maltese elephant of the late Tertiary 

 Period was only 1.7 metres in height. 



The Mastodon was characterized by having incisors in 

 both jaws of some of the species. It had molars with 

 conical cusps, and was 3f-4 metres (12-13 feet) in height. 

 The mastodon [Mastodon giganteum Cuvier) was an earlier 

 type than the elephant, and formerly inhabited the North 

 American continent. 



Order 8. Hyracoidea. — With some affinities to the Ro- 

 dentia, and a decided resemblance in some particulars to 

 the rhinoceros among the Ungulates, the members of this 

 small order are in general characterized by having long, 

 curved incisors; and by feet provided with pads as in Ro- 

 dents and Carmvora, the toes being encased in hoofs (four 

 in front and three behind). The Hyrax, a little gregarious 

 animal living in holes among rocks, of which there are two 

 or three species known, one South African, and another in 



