-18 



THE HORSE 



bushes, buds and leaves. They are hunted by the 

 natives of the land in which they live for the sake of 

 their hides and flesh. 



4 The tapirs/ Wallace says, c form a small group of 

 mammals, whose discontinuous distribution plainly indi- 

 cates their approaching extinction.' This view is sup- 

 ported, and the singular fact of the existence of so closely 

 allied animals as the Malayan and the American tapirs 

 in such distant regions of the earth and in no interven- 

 ing places, is accounted for by what is known of the 

 geological history of the race ; for, if we may judge from 

 the somewhat scanty remains which have been preserved 

 to our times, consisting chiefly of teeth, the tapirs must 

 once have had a very wide distribution. There is no 

 proof of their having lived in the Eocene epoch ; but by 

 the Middle Miocene, tapirs undistinguishable generically 

 from those now existing were already formed, so that 

 they share the honours with Hyomoschus or Dorcatherium 1 

 of being the oldest living mammalian form. Such re- 

 mains of Miocene and Pliocene age have been found in 

 France, Germany, and England (Suffolk red crag). They 

 appear, however, to have become exinct in Europe before 

 the Pleistocene period, as none of their bones or teeth have 

 been found in any of the caves or alluvial deposits in 



1 A small Artiodactyle, somewhat intermediate in structure be- 

 tween a deer and a pig, found living in Western Africa and fossil 

 in deposits of Miocene age in Germany. 



