Quadrupeds, 



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belongs to the tribe of the Pachydermata, or thick-skinned animals, 

 and its frequent haunts were marshy grounds or the estuaries of rivers ; 

 but its most important peculiarity is in the position of the tusks, which 

 remarkably tends to illustrate the habits of the animal. From the near 

 approximation to the living tapir, we may infer that it was furnished 

 with a proboscis, by means of which it conveyed to its mouth the food 

 it raked from the bottoms of lakes and rivers by its tusks and claws. 

 The bifid ungual bone (the two-railed) discovered with the other 

 remains of the Dinotherium, having this remarkable bifurcation, which 

 is found in no living quadrupeds except the pangolins, seems to have 

 possessed a claw like that of these animals, possessing peculiar advan- 

 tages for the purposes of digging and scraping, and indicating func- 

 tions concurrent with those of the tusks and scapula. 



In reference to this position of the tusks, constituting the great 

 peculiarity of the animal, Dr. Buckland has happily alluded, in closing 

 his account of it. We cite the learned Professor's own language : — 

 "It is mechanically impossible that a lower jaw nearly four feet long, 

 loaded with such heavy tusks at its extremity, could have been other- 

 wise than cumbrous and inconvenient to a quadruped living on dry 

 land. No such disadvantage would have attended this structure in a 

 large animal destined to live in water ; and the aquatic habits of 

 tapirs, to which the Dinotherium was most nearly allied, render it 

 probable that, like them, it was an inhabitant of fresh-water lakes and 

 rivers. To an animal of such habits the weight of the tusks sustained 

 in water would have been no source of inconvenience, and if we sup- 

 pose them to have been employed as instruments for raking and grub- 

 bing up the roots of large aquatic vegetables from the bottom, they 

 would under such service combine the mechanical powers of the 

 pickaxe with those of the horse-harrow of modern husbandry. The 

 weight of the head, placed above those downward tusks, would add to 

 their efficiency for the service here supposed, as the power of the 

 harrow is increased by being loaded with weights. The tusks of the 

 Dinotherium may also have been applied with mechanical advantage 

 to hook on the head of the animal to the banks, with the nostrils sus- 

 tained above the water, so as to breathe securely during sleep, whilst 

 the body remained floating at perfect ease beneath the surface ; the 

 animal might thus repose, moored to the margin of the lake or river, 

 without the slightest muscular exertion, the weight of the head and 

 body tending to fix and keep the tusks fast anchored in the substance 

 of the bank, as the weight of the body of a sleeping bird keeps the 

 claws firmly round the perch. These tusks might have been further 



