934 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IV. No. 104. 



surface tension, or of Ostwald on conductiv- 

 ity, to verify this statement. 



If in so short a time such advances have 

 been made, it seems reasonable to expect 

 much from work in this very imperfectly 

 explored field, which belongs neither to 

 physics nor chemistry, but is a distinct re- 

 gion, lying between these two, and employs, 

 in addition to its own, some of the theoreti- 

 cal and experimental methods belonging to 

 both. Harry C. Jones. 



Chemical Laboeatoey, 



Johns Hopkins Univeesity. 



TAPIRS PA81 AND PRESENT. 

 An important contribution to our knowl- 

 edge of the structure and origin of the 

 tapirs has recently been made by Mr. J. B. 

 Hatcher,* of Princeton University. The 

 distribution of the recent tapirs remained 

 an enigma until the discoveries by paleon- 

 tologists solved the problem. "We now know 

 that in former geological epochs, and as 

 early as the Oligocene, the true tapirs were 

 generally distributed over the northern 

 hemisphere of both continents, and that 

 probably owing to geographical and climatic 

 changes the present tapirs were stranded as 

 it were in two widely separated areas of the 

 the globe, that is to say, in the Malay 

 Archipelago and in South America. 



In. a number of the mammalian orders, 

 there are types of great interest to the mor- 

 phologist, which are called generalized or 

 collective types. These forms include many 

 characters in their structure which are 

 primitive, and they are of great assistance 

 in unravelling the phylogenetic history of 

 the mammalia. The tapir is such a gen- 

 eralized member of the perissodactyle divi- 

 sion of the ungulates, and it represents in 

 a certain degree, especially in the structure 

 of the feet, the ancestral type from which 

 arose all the modern odd-toed ungulates. 



* Kecent and Fossil Tapirs, by J. B. Hatcher, Am. 

 Jour. Sci., March, 1896. 



It is surprising how little change th& 

 tapir has undergone since the Oligocene, and 

 the genus Frotapirus based upon the dental 

 characters alone can hardly be separated 

 generically from the recent tapir. The 

 structure of the skull in Frotapirus is de- 

 cidedly more primitive than that of any of 

 the living tapirs. In Frotapirus validus, of 

 the White Eiver Oligocene of the United 

 States, the skull is elongated and com- 

 pressed, in contrast with recent species the 

 nasals project farther forward, and conse- 

 quently the proboscis in this ancient tapir 

 was probably much smaller than in recent 

 forms. The shape of the nasal bones is 

 quite different from that of recent tapirs, as 

 in these the nasals are deeply excavated 

 proximally into fossae which lodge the largfr 

 air sinuses. In Frotapirus, however, these- 

 fossae are represented by two long and nar- 

 row grooves, one on each side of the nasals,, 

 and these grooves extend farther forward on 

 the skull than in the living tapirs. 



In Frotapirus validus the cranial portion 

 of the skull is much elongated and the 

 sagittal crest is prominent; on the other 

 hand, the postglenoid and paroccipital pro- 

 cesses are united and close the external 

 auditory meatus inferiorly. This is de- 

 cidedly a specialized character of Frotapirus 

 and is not found in the skull of any of the 

 existing tapirs. In comparing the recent 

 with the fossil tapirs Mr. Hatcher finds 

 that the skull of Tapirus roulini (Syn. T. 

 pinchacus) more closely resembles that of 

 the fossil Frotapirus validus than any other 

 of the living tapirs. Tapirus roulini is- 

 rather aberrant in its distribution, as it i&^ 

 found in the high latitudes of the Andes. 

 The osteology of this species has been very 

 fully described by Ddderlein.* 



I see no use in reviving the generic nam& 

 Elasmognathus Gill. The ossification of the 

 mesethmoid in this form is not considered 



*Uber das skelet des Tapirus Pinchacus, In- 

 augural Dissertation, Bonn, 1877. 



