VII.] UNGULATES. 241 



cidai) peculiar to Ethiopia, it is not improbable from the wide dis- 

 tribution and antiquity of the group, that these rodents also entered 

 tropical Africa at a comparatively early epoch. The deductions 

 drawn from these rodents as to a connection between Africa and 

 South America have been mentioned in Chapter III. 



Among all the striking features of the mammalian fauna of 

 Ethiopian Africa, none is more remarkable than the enormous 

 preponderance of ungulates, many of which are of great corporeal 

 bulk. Of these a large number of genera and two families are 

 absolutely peculiar to this region. As may be gathered both from 

 their absence at the present day in Madagascar, and the late 

 epoch at which their remains are found in the Tertiaries of the 

 Holarctic and Oriental regions, all these creatures have reached 

 the Ethiopian region but recently. The Hippopotamida is one 

 of the two families now practically peculiar to the region, the 

 common species {Hippopotamus amphibius) having ranged over a 

 considerable portion of Europe during the Plistocene and upper 

 Pliocene ages, while even in the beginning of this century it 



FIG. 56. HEAD OF WART HOG {Phacochtxrus cethiopicus). 



frequented lower Egypt. The pigmy hippopotamus (H. liberi- 



ensis) of western Africa, which is referred by many writers to a 



genus apart, and more resembles the pigs in its mode of life, 



I, 1 6 



