330 



BRANCH CHORDATA 



animal found in Ethiopia, Africa, and Arabia, including Palestine.' It 

 is sometimes called the "rock-rabbit," since the most species live among 

 rocks and mountains, and their squatty attitude, short tail, and split 

 muffle, as well as a pair of rodent-like incisors in the upper jaw, remind one 

 of the rabbit. They have no canine teeth. Some species are found upon 

 the trunks and large branches of trees, and sleep in the hollows of trees. 

 The skull shows affinity with the Perissodactyles and also with the rodents. 

 The ears are short and the body fur covered. The clavicle is absent, the 

 radius and ulna complete, but often ankylosed. The hyrax has a greater 

 number of trunk vertebrae than any other mammal, twenty-one or twenty- 

 two of them bearing ribs. The hyrax differs from all other mammals in 

 having, in addition to the ordinary cecum, a pair of supplementary ceca 

 situated some distance down the large intestine. 



The Elephant (Proboscid'ea). — The skin is greatly thickened and scantily 

 covered with hair. There is a tuft of hair on the end of the tail. The mass- 

 ive, stiff limbs are quite free from the body. The nose and upper lip^ are 

 produced into a long, flexible, muscular, prehensile trunk or proboscis (Fig. 

 269), at the end of which the nares are situated. There are five complete 

 digits on both fore and hind limbs, and though they are bound together in 



Fig. 208. — Hyrax syriacus. 



the integument, each is encased in a separate hoof. The skull is very large, 

 but the bones are rendered light by their numerous air cavities. The brain- 

 case is small in comparison with the size of the skull, as the bones are 

 enormously thickened. In some specimens the bony skull wall is greater 

 in diameter than the cranial cavity, the frontal bones in older animals some- 

 times reaching the thickness of one foot. In existing forms there is a 

 single pair of upper incisors, which develop into long tusks of solid ivory. 

 A single tusk sold in London in 1X74 weighed 188 pounds. There is no 

 trace of any canines. Molars are so large that there is never but a single 

 functional one on each side of each jaw at a time. They are transversely 

 ridged. Elephants are herbivorous. The stomach is simple and the cecum 



' This is supposed to be the cony of the Bible, where it is spoken of as a 

 "wise, though a feeble folk," It is said to be too wise to be caught 

 in traps, at least, but the further reference that it " eheweth the cud, but 

 divideth not the hoof" throws some doubt upon its identity. However, 

 Bruce kept one in cajjtivity and found that it did chew the cud. (See 

 Beddard, p. 234.) 



^Beddard's " Mammalia." 



