272 
ZOOLOGY, 
foot being supported by thick, broad pads. The legs are 
almost wholly free from the body. The placenta is zonary 
and deciduate. The skin is naked in the existing ele- 
phants, but the extinct mammoth was covered sparsely 
with long hairs. Elephants live in herds, browsing on the 
leaves of trees and herbs. They attain a height of from 
three to four metres (10-12 feet), but are rarely over nine 
feet in height. The Asiatic elephant has a concave fore- 
head and small ears, while the African species has a full, 
rounded forehead and large ears, with four hoofs on the 
fore feet and three on the hind feet, the Asiatic elephant 
having one more hoof on each foot. The fossil mammoth 
{Eleplias primigenms, Fig. 308), which was contempora- 
neous with early man, was not much larger than the exist- 
ing species. Its tusks, however, were of great size, some 
being five metres long, It formerly ranged in herds over 
northern Europe and Asia, as well as America, bones occur- 
ring under swamps in the Northern and Middle United 
States. A carcass fi'ozen in the ice, with the hair still on, 
was discovered near the mouth of the Lena River in Siberia. 
A pygmy, extinct Maltese elephant of the late Tertiary 
Period was only 1.7 metres in height. 
The Mastodo7i was characterized by having incisors in 
both jaws of some of the species. It had molars with 
conical cusps, and was 8f-4 metres (12-13 feet) in height. 
The mastodon {Mastodon giganteiim Cuvier) was an earlier 
type than the elephant, and formerly inhabited the North 
American continent. 
Order 8. Hyracoidea. — With some affinities to the Ro- 
dentia, and a decided resemblance in some particulars to 
the rhinoceros among the Ungulates, the members of this 
small order are in general characterized by having long, 
curved incisors; and by feet provided with pads as in Ro- 
dents and Carmvora, the toes being encased in hoofs (four 
in front and three behind). The Hyrax, a little gregarious 
animal living in holes among rocks, of which there are two 
or three species known, one South African, and another in 
