THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 447 



CHAPTER V. 



ANIMAL LIFE IN THE TROPICAL FORESTS : THE ELEPHANT 



THE RHINOCEROS. 



SOME thousands of years ago no long period in the history of 

 creation, though so far outstripping the written records of man 

 gigantic animals, with huge trunks and ivory tusks, forming the 

 family of Proboscidese, were distributed throughout all the northern 

 regions of Europe, Asia, and America. 



Of this family the most ancient and colossal representative is the 

 Dinotherium, which appears to have flourished in the Miocene period 

 of the Tertiary epoch, and a skull of which was disinterred at Eppel- 

 sheim, in Hesse Darmstadt, in 1836, measuring about four feet in 

 length and three in breadth ; whence Cuvier inferred that the total 

 length of the animal was probably eighteen feet. This pachyderm, 

 which far surpassed in size the largest living elephant, had a com- 

 paratively short trunk, and tusks inserted in front of the lower jaw. 

 Such a lower jaw could hardly have been otherwise than cumbrous 

 and inconvenient to the quadruped if he lived on land. No such 

 disadvantage, as Dr. Buckland remarks,* would have attended this 

 structure in a large animal destined to live in water ; and the aquatic 

 habits of the family of Tapirs, to which the Dinotherium was most 

 nearly allied, render it probable that, like them, it was an inhabitant 

 of fresh- water lakes and rivers. 



Two other kinds of Proboscidians, the Mastodon and the Mam- 

 moth, belong to the Pleiocene period, the last of the Tertiary epoch, and 

 to the Intermediate or Glacial deposits, which immediately preceded 

 the modern epoch. The Mastodon only differed essentially from the 

 Elephant in his dental apparatus. His molar teeth were covered 

 with conical projections, whence his name ; he had two small tusks, 

 * Dr. Buckland, Bridgewater Treatise, " On Geology and Palaeontology," &c. 



