CHAPTER IX 
ORDER OF THE HYRAX, OR CONEY 
HY RACOIDAE 
THE HYRAX FAMILY 
URELY 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. 
Tue Care Hyrax (Hyrazx 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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