282 THE ORIENTAL REGION. [CHAP. 



other Ethiopian types, almost impossible to account for. One of 

 the two-horned extinct Indian rhinoceroses (R. platyrhinus] ap- 

 pears to have been the ancestor both of the existing R. simus of 

 Africa and R. antiquitatis of the Plistocene of northern Asia and 

 Europe ; the evolution of the latter species having not improbably 

 taken place in the countries lying between India and China, 

 whence the creature wandered northwards and westwards with the 

 mammoth to the Arctic tundras. With regard to the Equidce, it 

 will suffice to mention that species of Equus occur in the Plisto- 

 cene of Central India and Madras, and that wild asses (of a type 

 markedly different from the African wild ass) occur in Sind and 

 Kach. The genus, like the antelopes, is, however, totally un- 

 known in the countries to the east of the Bay of Bengal, as it is in 

 Ceylon. In the Tapiridcz, the Malayan tapir (Tapirus indicus) 

 inhabits the Malay Peninsula as far north as Mergui, and also the 

 islands of Sumatra and Borneo. It is important to notice that 

 although fossil remains of tapirs are unknown from the Pliocene of 

 the Siwaliks, they are met with in caverns in China. 



Distinguished, among other features, from its African cousin by 

 the thinner and more numerous enamel-plates of its molar teeth, 

 the Indian elephant (Elephas indicus) ranges over the greater part 

 of the region, being found in suitable districts in India, Ceylon, 

 Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Cochin China, and Sumatra. This 

 species is a near ally of the mammoth (E. primigenius) ; and it 

 may prove that both are descendants of a Siwalik species (E. 

 hysudricus], which has molar teeth of the type we should expect to 

 find in such an ancestral form. If this view be correct, the 

 mammoth has probably wandered to northern Europe and Siberia 

 from the countries lying just to the east of India. It has been 

 mentioned in an earlier chapter that the extinct so-called stego- 

 dont elephants (such as E. clifti and E. insignis] are mainly 

 confined to this region, although some of the species are found in 

 north China and Japan. As these elephants form the transition 

 between Elephas and Mastodon, and also since the species of the 

 latter genus which may be regarded as the original stock of the 

 elephants is confined to the Indian and Malayan Pliocene, it may 

 be taken for granted that the elephants have been developed from 

 the mastodons within the limits of the Oriental region. In the 



