THE AMERICAN BISON 



203 



Archipelago, wei'e once widely distributed, both in 

 Europe and North America; and carcases of a species 

 which was clothed with woolly hair have been found 

 preserved in the frozen ground of Northern Siberia. 

 Another Siberian form, allied to the rhinoceros, had a 

 very large horn supported on a huge prominence, situated 

 further back on the head than is the horn of the existing 

 rhinoceros. A small species found in the Miocene deposits 

 of France, and an allied North American species, are 

 distinguished by the singular fact that they possessed a 

 pair of very small horns placed side by side, instead of one 

 in front of the other, as is the case in all living rhino- 

 ceroses which bear two horns. In the United States, 

 during the Miocene period, enormous beasts abounded 

 only inferior in size to the elephant, and which had a 

 transverse pair of large, bony prominences over the nose, 

 each of which probably bore a horny sheath during life. 

 A numerous group of fossil forms existed in Eocene 

 times both in Europe and in America, called lophiodonts. 

 They are characterised by details of tooth structure 

 which it would be out of place here to describe ; but the 

 group includes a number of more or less imperfectly 

 known forms, which ranged in size from the bulk of n 

 rhinoceros down to that of a rabbit. 



When Cuvier discovered the Anojdotheo'ium before 

 noted, he also discovered another interesting, very dis- 

 tinct, fossil animal, which he called PalcBotherium. It 

 had three digits to each foot, and is interesting as being 

 one of the earliest fossil animals ideally reconstructed by 

 its discoverer. But the fossils which are likely to be the 

 most interesting to our readers are those which relate to 

 that most favourite animal, the horse. There is a kind 

 of wild horse in Central Asia, there are different wild 

 asses in Africa, S}T?ia, Persia, and Thibet; and there 



