180 
MAMMALIA. 
though. ]ie has favoured us with no intelligible description 
of it. 
Fossilized bones of the Rhinoceros are met with in great 
quantities in tertiary and diluvian soils. We will only mention 
here the R. ticliorinus , which was greater in size than the 
African Rhinoceros, and had a very elongated head, supporting 
two long horns. The remains of this Pachyderm is pretty 
often found in the bone caverns ( cavernes a ossements), and in 
the alluvions of rivers of France and England. In Siberia the 
remains of the it. tichorinus are very plentiful ; they are mixed 
up with those of the Mammoth. In 1771 was discovered, in 
the midst of the ice of that region, a carcass, very nearly entire, 
of the antediluvian Rhinoceros, with its skin, its hair, and its 
flesh intact.* In the excavations made, preparatory to building 
the new Hotel de Yille, at Paris, an omoplate of the R. ticho- 
rinus was found. 
Hyrax. — Cuvier has placed next to the Rhinoceros a pretty 
little animal, the Hyrax of the Cape of Good Hope, which is not 
larger than a Rabbit. It is rather clumsily made ; its body elon- 
gated, and low on its legs ; its head thick and heavy ; its muzzle 
obtuse. Its coat, silky and very thick, is of a brownish grey 
above, of a greyish white below. It inhabits the mountains 
covered with woods near the Cape of Good Hope, and lives in the 
midst of the steepest and most precipitous rocks, either in a 
burrow, or in a fissure of the rocks, or in a hole in a tree. 
Quick, alert, and timid, it eats herbs, like the Hare, and is easily 
tamed. The naturalist, Boitard, in his work, Le Jar clin des 
Plantes , is very angry at seeing the bonds of form, of grandeur, 
of aspect, of habits, of intelligence, broken through by Cuvier, so 
that he may class this little beast, on account of the structure of 
its teeth, with the monstrous Rhinoceros. Let us be angry with 
him ; but, while we quite understand the complaints of senti- 
mental zoology, let us put the Hyrax in the place assigned to it 
by scientific zoology. 
The Hyrax of Syria is the Saphan of Scripture. Bufion has 
described it, and modern naturalists have studied it. 
Tapir. — Three species of Tapir are known ; two live in South 
America ; the third is peculiar to India. The Indian and one of 
* See Figuier's The World before the Deluge : Chapman & Hall. 
