THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
the Orient. Regular paths are made by these animals through 
the woods, a fact of which hunters and trappers take advantage, 
for in Costa Rica, particularly, the tapir is much hunted for the 
sake of its flesh, which is good for use fresh, and is extensively 
salted and dried by the backwoodsmen; while the thick hide is 
a favorite material for twisted whips. 
Brazilian tapirs are often tamed, and are said to make amusing 
and affectionate pets. Shavings from the hoofs are regarded by 
the Orinoco Indians as very valuable in medicine; but sex 
must be carefully distinguished — no man must be dosed with 
the hoofs of any but a male tapir, and vice versa. 
Behemoth and his Horn 
The rhinoceros is another antique preserved to us as a relic 
of nature’s early attempts to formulate a solid-hoofed type of 
quadruped. Its kind was once as widespread on both sides of 
the globe as were the tapirs, but proved immobile and suc- 
cumbed in most regions to unfavorable alterations in geography 
and climate. 
The family begins to be recognized in fossils toward the close of the 
Eocene, in both Europe and North America; and the Miocene genera differ 
very little in their skeleton from the existing one. It is an 
interesting circumstance that some of the earliest (amynodonts) 
seem to have been aquatic, and in form and habits much like our hippopota- 
muses; while others, such as the hyracodonts, were agile, light-chested, rather 
long-necked and hornless, resembling a horse in build, and in the compact- 
ness of the hoofs indicating a plains-dwelling existence. These last were 
American. They were apparently defenseless, and soon disappeared; and 
probably all that saved the more direct line of ancestors was the fortunate 
fact that in the Old World they gradually developed weapons of defense 
on the nose. It is true that Diceratherium, a small American form of 
Miocene Age, had nose horns, but they were weak and set side by side — 
an arrangement which here, as elsewhere, has proved ineffective; the nose 
does not furnish a base strong enough for paired horns, which must be 
subjected to sidewise wrenches in use. 
374 
Evolution. 
