ELEPHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, AND HORSES 267 



useless burden to the animal, as they were unserviceable for 

 defence or offence, and of no use as diggers for grubbing up 

 trees and roots (the original object of the tusks, and one much 

 evident with the African elephant). It is thought that in the 

 female tusks were present, which were small and straight. The 

 hide of the mammoth was covered almost all over with a 

 dense clothing of woolly under-hair of a reddish-brown colour. 

 In addition there were strange manes of long coarse hair (brown 

 or black), which hung from the sides of the animal and reached 

 almost to the ground. Other fringes and crests of long hair 

 grew along the edge of the ears and at the top of the skull. 

 There was long hair or bristles at the end of the tail as in 

 existing elephants. In height and general bulk the mammoth 

 does not seem to have much exceeded the larger known 

 specimens of its near relation, the existing Indian elephant. 1 



SUB-ORDER: PERISSODACTYLA. ODD-TOED UNGULATES 



The Odd-toed Ungulates are so named because in their 

 original departure from the five-toed type of early Ungulate 

 (Condylarthra) they laid the chief stress of their weight on the 

 third finger or toe of the foot (equivalent to our "second" finger), 

 whereas in the other great upward branch of the Condylarthra 

 the Artiodactyles the stress was laid on the two middle toes, or 

 fingers (digits three and four, our "second" and "third" fingers). 

 There are other characteristics connected with the formation of 

 the molar teeth which are distinctive of the two great orders 

 of Odd-toed and Even-toed Ungulates, but these, perhaps, are of 

 too recondite a nature to be discussed in this volume. The 

 Odd-toed Ungulates retain that alisphenoid perforation for 

 the passage of the carotid artery, near the base of the skull, 

 which is met with in the Carnivora and several other orders. 

 The Even-toed Ungulates have lost this alisphenoid perfora- 

 tion. There is also a difference in the number of the vertebrae of 

 the back, while, as is known to even unscientific readers, the 



1 Which occasionally reaches to 1 2 ft. at the shoulder. 



