212 



GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. 



[part IV. 



by several species in the Pliocene of North. America, while in 

 Europe it occurs both in the Older Pliocene and Upper Miocene. 

 Various other allied forms, in which the lateral toes are more 

 and more developed, and most of which are now classed in a dis- 

 tinct family, Anchitheridse, range back through the Miocene to 

 the Eocene period, A sufficient account of these has already 

 been given in vol. i. chap. vi. p. 135, to which the reader is 

 referred for the supposed origin and migrations of the horse. 



Family 44.— TAPIPJD^. (2 Genera ? 6 Species.) 



General Distribution. 



The Tapirs form a smaU group of animals whose discontinuous 

 distribution plainly indicates their approaching extinction. For 

 a long time only two species were known, the black American, 

 and the white-banded Malay tapir, the former confined to the 

 equatorial forests of South America, the latter to the Malay 

 peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo (Plate VIII. vol. i. p. 337). 

 Lately however another, or perhaps two distinct species (or ac- 

 cording to Dr. J. E. Gray, four !) have been discovered in the 

 Andes of New Granada and Ecuador, at an elevation of from 

 8,000 to 12,000 feet ; while one or perhaps two more, forming^ 

 the allied genus Elasmognathus, have been found to inhabit 

 Central America from Panama to Guatemala. 



Extinct Tapirs. — True tapirs inhabited Western Europe, from 

 the latest Pliocene back to the earliest Miocene times ; while 

 they only occur in either North or South America in the Post- 

 pliocene deposits and caves. The singular distribution of the 

 living species is thus explained, since we see that they are 

 an Old World group which only entered the American continent 

 at a comparatively recent epoch. An ancestral form of this 

 group — Lophiodon — is found in Miocene and Eocene deposits of 



