CHAPTER IX 

 ORDER OF THE HYRAX, OR CONEY 



HYRACOIDAE 



THE HYRAX FAMILY 



SURELY Nature was in a sportive mood when this absurd 

 little Order was pieced together like a block for a crazy- 

 quilt and given to the world. No wonder it puzzled the 

 early solons of the zoological line; but it is a joke of jokes in 

 classification that any systematist should have solemnly 

 classed it with the pachyderms, or thick-skinned animals. 

 It was like associating our pika with elephants and rhi- 

 noceroses. 



THE CAPE HYRAX (Hyrax capensis) taken singularly, looks 

 like a little dingy-brown rabbit, in size half-way between a 

 cottontail and a jack rabbit. In structure it is indeed fear- 

 fully and wonderfully made. It has plantigrade feet, like no 

 other animal than itself; it has molar teeth and various bones 

 like a rhinoceros; its lower incisors are like those of a hippo- 

 potamus, and in the great number of its dorsal vertebrae it 

 is like a sloth. Its tail is nothing but a small tubercle. In 

 appearance it looks like a cross between a Rocky Mountain 

 pika and a woodchuck, and in its haunts and habits it is 

 thoroughly like the pika of the slide-rock. 



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