270 MOSTLY MAMMALS 
one of which, the Cyprian AH. minutus, had much the 
proportions of the Liberian species, although its molar- 
teeth are of a simpler type. Possibly these small forms 
may have been more or less completely terrestrial in their 
habits, 
The three Indian species have been already sufficiently 
discussed, while mention has been likewise made of the 
Burmese hippopotamus. The latter species, by the way, 
was decidedly pig-like in many parts of its structure, and 
may well, therefore, have been a marsh-haunting animal. 
It was at one time thought that one of the later Indian 
hippopotamuses was an unknown animal referred to in 
Sanscrit literature, but further investigation has shown 
this view to be untenable. Eastwards of Burma, we are 
unaware that there is any evidence of the existence of 
these animals, and they appear to have been always 
unknown in the New World. 
Although it is possible that in Madagascar Lemerle’s 
hippopotamus may have been exterminated by human 
agency, such an explanation will not hold good with regard 
to the other fossil species. So far as can be seen, India and 
Burma are now in every way as well fitted to be the 
dwelling-places of hippopotamuses, giraffes, and ostriches as 
they were during the Pliocene period, when those animals 
either wallowed in their lakes and rivers, or stalked over 
their plains ; and as the former countries have not been 
completely swept during the interval by a glacial period, 
it seems impossible to divine the reason why these creatures 
should have so completely vanished from the one area 
and have survived in full strength in the other. 
