NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



37 



very remote epoch. In truth, it was contemporaneous 

 with the mammoth, and the latter, if he did not live at 

 the same time as the earliest human races, preceded 

 them but by a very brief interval. 



It was Cuvier who distinguished the great quadruped 

 from the living elephant by pointing out its osteological 



Mastodon restored. 



differences, and appropriately named it the Mastodon, 

 or teat-like toothed animal, from the Greek fiaaroc, 

 " a teat," and odovg, " a tooth." 



As we have said, its habits were herbivorous. It 

 doubtlessly lived on the banks of great rivers and on 

 moist and marshy lands. Besides the Mastodon gigan- 

 teus there flourished a less formidable species, one-third 

 smaller than the elephant, which ranged over nearly 

 all Europe. 



At this period (and also in the Miocene) the Apes 

 make their appearance. In the ossiferous beds of Sau- 

 sun were discovered the Pithecus antiquus, and the 

 Dryopithecus. At Pikerni, in Greece, have been found 

 the entire skeleton of a Mesopithecus, whose general 

 organization resembled that of the dog-faced baboon, 

 or mandrill. 



The hippopotamus, tapir, and camel of the Pleio- 

 cene period were not distinguished by any remarkable 

 characters. The horse, the ox, and the deer resembled 

 their successors of the same genera in all important 

 features; the horse, however, did not exceed in size the 

 ass of the present epoch. 



The species of rhinoceros belonging to the upper 

 Tertiaries is the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the Latin adjec- 

 tive referring to the peculiar bony partition which 

 separated its two nostrils. Its nose was surmounted 

 with two horns ; its huge body clothed with very thick 

 hair; while its skin lacked the rough callous scales 

 which are found on that of the living African species. 



The traveller Pallas furnishes a very interesting 

 account of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus which he saw ex- 

 humed from the ice, wherein its skin, hair, and flesh 



had been preserved. This occurred on the banks of the 

 Viloui, a Siberian tributary of the Lena, in December, 

 1771. 



'.' The remains appeared to me at first glance," he 

 said, " to belong to a rhinoceros ; the head especially 

 was quite recognizable, since it was covered with its 

 leathery skin, and the skin had 

 preserved all its external char- 

 acters, and many short hairs. 

 The eyelids had even escaped 

 total decay, and in the cranium 

 :. here and there, under the skin, 

 I perceived some matter which 

 was evidently- the remains of 

 putrified flesh. I also remarked 

 in the feet the remains of the 

 tendons and cartilages where the 

 skin had been removed. The 

 head was without its horn, and 

 the feet were without hoofs. 

 The place of the horn, and the 

 raised skin which had sur- 

 rounded it, and the division 

 which existed in both the hind 

 and fore feet, were evident proofs 

 of its being a rhinoceros. . . 

 The skin and tendons of the 

 head and feet still preserved 

 considerable flexibility, imbued 

 as it were with moisture from 

 the ground; but the flesh exhaled 

 a strong ammoniacal odour. 



"The rhinoceros to which the different members 

 belonged was neither large for its species nor advanced 

 in age, as the bones of the head attested ; yet it was 

 evidently an adult, from a comparison made of the size 

 of the cranium with that of others of the same species 

 more advanced in age, which were afterwards discovered 

 in a fossilized condition in divers parts of Siberia. The 

 entire length of the head, from the upper part of the 

 nape of the neck to the extremity of the denuded bone 

 of the jaw, was thirty inches ; the horns were not with 

 the head, but we could still see evident traces of two, 

 the nasal and frontal. The front, unequal and a little 

 protuberant between the orbits, as well as of a rhom- 

 boidal shape, was deficient in the skin, and only covered 

 by a light horny membrane, bristling with hard straight 

 hairs. The skin which clothed the greater portion of 

 the surface of the head was, in the dried state, a tena- 

 cious fibrous substance, like curried leather, of a brown- 

 ish black on the outside and white in the inside when 

 burnt, its odour was that of common leather; the mouth, 

 in the place where the lips should have been soft and 

 fleshy, was putrid and greatly lacerated; the extremities 

 of the maxillary bone were bare. 



" On the left side, which probably had been longest 

 exposed to atmospheric action, the skin in some places 

 was decomposed and rubbed on the surface. Yet, on 

 the right side, most of the mouth was so well preserved 

 that the pores or little holes, from which doubtless the 

 hairs had fallen, were still visible all over that side, and 

 even in front. In certain places on the right side of 

 the jaw numerous hairs were still grouped in tufts; 



