160 MAMMALIA. 



though he has favoured us with no intelligible description 

 of it. 



Fossilized bones of the Rhinoceros are met with in great 

 quantities in tertiary and diluvian soils. We will only mention 

 here the R. tichorimis, which was greater in size than the 

 African Rhinoceros, and had a very elongated head, supporting 

 two long horns. The remains of this Pachyderm is pretty 

 often found in the bone caverns (cavernes d ossements), and in . 

 the alluvions of rivers of France and England. In Siberia the 

 remains of the It. tichorimis are very plentiful ; they are mixed 

 up with those of the Mammoth. In 1771 was discovered, in 

 the midst of the ice of that region, a carcass, very nearly entire, 

 of the antediluvian Rhinoceros, with its skin, its hair, and its 

 flesh intact.* In the excavations made, preparatory to building 

 the new Hotel de Ville, at Paris, an omoplate of the H. ticho- 

 riniis was found. 



Hijrax. — Cuvier has placed next to the Rhinoceros a pretty 

 little animal, the Ilj'rax of the Cape of Good Hope, which is not 

 larger than a Rabbit. It is rather clumsily made ; its body elon- 

 gated, and low on its legs ; its head thick and heavy ; its muzzle 

 obtuse. Its coat, silky and very thick, is of a brownish grey 

 above, of a greyish white below. It inhabits the moimtains 

 covered with woods near the Cape of Good Hope, and lives in the 

 midst of the steepest and most precip)itous rocks, either in a 

 burrow, or in a fissure of the rocks, or in a hole in a tree. 

 Quick, alert, and timid, it eats herbs, like the Hare, and is easdy 

 tamed. The naturalist, Boitard, in his work, Le Jardin des 

 Plantes, is very angry at seeing the bonds of form, of grandeur, 

 of aspect, of habits, of intelligence, broken through by Cuvier, so 

 that he may class this little beast, on account of the structure of 

 its teeth, with the monstrous Rhinoceros. Let us be angry with 

 him ; but, while we quite imderstand the complaints of senti- 

 mental zoology, let us put the Hyrax in the place assigned to it 

 hj scientific zoology. 



The Hyrax of Syria is the Saphan of Scripture. Buffon has 

 described it, and modern naturalists have studied it. 



Tapir. — Three species of Tapir are known ; two live in South 

 America ; the third is pecidiar to India. The Indian and one of 



* See Figuier's The V'oiid before the Deluge : Chapman & Hall. 



