If the modern hippopotamus had never been seen alive by man, would- 
be restorers of this animal’s outline would naturally group their ideas around 
the two following hypotheses:— 
1. That the roughened maxillo-maxillary bosses were clad in leathery 
skin, and it might even be contended they were used as fighting 
bosses, also that the intervening fossae were manifest as factors of 
the facial contour. Now. such a contention is not extravagant, 
particularly when we remember that the said fossae are 50 m.m. 
deep, and about the same width across. 
2. Again, others would as stoutly maintain that the roughened bosses 
were simply incidental to the alveolar requirements of the tusks, in 
the first place, and. in the second, to the needs of muscular 
aponeuroses, relating to the face and lips. Upon this second 
hypothesis, the outline of the face would be uninfluenced by the 
fossae, extensive though they be. The latter we know to be 
correct, as the animal is here to prove it. These imaginary 
instances exactly reproduce the conditions under which we attempt 
to restore the head of a Xototherium to-day. Deciduous epiphyses 
of ceratophoral import may have existed, or the roughening may 
have simply referred to muscular aponeurotic conditions. 
As it is fairly certain that the Xototheria survived the Ice Age* and that 
they were to our fauna what Tichorhinus was to that of Europe,'it will be 
noted that a heavy hairv coat has been added to the animal in the picture. 
Lastly, the fact may be recalled that all tapirs, living and extinct, and all 
rhinoceroses, living and extinct, so intergrade in their various characters that 
the teeth alone serve to distinguish them the one from the other. Xoto- 
therian teeth are more tapir-like than rhinoceros-like. 
Victoria Museum, 
Launceston, Tasmania, 
March 26, 1917. 
H. H. SCOTT, 
Curator. 
