212 
GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. 
[PART IV. 
"by several species in the Pliocene of North America, while in 
Europe it occurs both in the Older Pliocene and Upper Miocene. 
Various other allied forms, in which the lateral toes are more 
and more developed, and most of which are now classed in a dis- 
tinct family, Anchitheridae, range hack through the Miocene to 
the Eocene period. A sufficient account of these has already 
been given in vol. i. chap. vi. p. 135, to which the reader is 
referred for the supposed origin and migrations of the horse. 
Family 44. — TAPIKIDAL (2 Genera ? 6 Species.) 
General Distribution. 
Neotropical 
Sob-regions. 
N EARCTIC 
Sub-regions. 
Palaiarctio 
Sub-regions. 
Ethiopian 
Sub-regions. 
Oriental 
Sub- regions. 
Australian 
Sub-regions. 
- 2.3 - 
| — 4 
The Tapirs form a small group of animals whose discontinuous 
distribution plainly indicates their approaching extinction. For 
a long time only two species were known, the black American, 
and the white-banded Malay tapir, the former confined to the 
equatorial forests of South America, the latter to the Malay 
peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo (Plate VIII. vol. i. p. 337). 
Lately however another, or perhaps two distinct species (or ac- 
cording to Dr. J. E. Gray, four !) have been discovered in the 
Andes of New Granada and Ecuador, at an elevation of from 
8,000 to 12,000 feet ; while one or perhaps two more, forming 
the allied genus Elasmognatkus , have been found to inhabit 
Central America from Panama to Guatemala. 
Extinct Tapirs . — True tapirs inhabited Western Europe, from 
. the latest Pliocene back to the earliest Miocene times ; while 
they only occur in either North or South America in the Post- 
pliocene deposits and caves. The singular distribution of the 
living species is thus explained, since we see that they are 
an Old World group which only entered the American continent 
at a comparatively recent epoch. An ancestral form of this 
group — Lophiodon — is found in Miocene and Eocene deposits of 
