OF CREATION. 287 



and elegant as the gazelle, it would course rapidly 

 along on the banks of the lakes and rivers, or on 

 the borders of those marshes in which the former 

 species lived, and would feed on the aromatic 

 herbs, and browse on the young shoots and tender 

 buds of shrubs growing in such localities. Its move- 

 ments would be free and unencumbered ; and, like 

 most of the more active Herbivora, it was doubtless 

 a timid animal, and provided with large and very 

 mobile ears, readily turned in any direction at the 

 slightest approach of danger. There can be little 

 doubt, too, that it was covered by very short hair, 

 and that in all external characters it resembled 

 closely the ruminants (such as the smaller deer), and 

 could hardly have been distinguished from them. 



The third group of Anoplotheres contains several 

 species much smaller than either of those just de- 

 scribed, one of which resembled the hare, not only 

 in dimensions but also in the proportions of its 

 limbs, which are so contrived as to have given it 

 great swiftness of motion, and therefore a means of 

 escape from its enemies. If the Xiphodon was the 

 roe of the antediluvian world, and, from the almost 

 total absence of true ruminants, it is not impossible 

 that the place of the deer tribe was occupied by 

 the pachyderms, this little species represented in the 

 same way the smaller rodents, such as the hare and 

 the rabbit. 



It is interesting and curious to find that there is 

 another small pachyderm, whose remains have been 

 found in the London clay, but which belongs to 

 a distinct genus, still more closely resembling the 

 hare, and was even provided with the large full 



