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In some respects it is half brother to the hippopotamus and the great grass eating Pachydermata, to whom it comes so near in internal organization, and above all in the structure of its molars, that M. de Blainville seriously proposed ranking it among the elephants, though as an irregular elephant, as you may suppose.
With quite as little personal beauty as the Pachydermata of which I have hitherto treated, the Rhinoceros takes his place among the powerful of the earth. He has no tusks, but bears one or two horns upon his nose. Of these, when there are two, the foremost is the largest, all are curved and polished, and appear to be formed of hairs, aggregated into a solid mass.
These facts make it probable that these animals are living representatives of a group which existed at a distant epoch of the world's history, and which possessed a structure partaking of the character of the two great orders Rodentia and Pachydermata now so widely distinct in the majority of forms.
It belongs to the same division of the Pachydermata with the rhinoceros, tapir, and palaeotherium; but in the structure of the bones of its long neck it shows a clear relation to the camel, or rather to the guanaco and llama.
Formerly it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent allied races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had never possessed great vigour.
Owen states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the Gnawers, the order which, at the present day, includes most of the smallest quadrupeds: in many details it is allied to the Pachydermata: judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the Dugong and Manatee, to which it is also allied.
The rock-shelter of Entre-Roches is supposed to date from Paleolithic times, and if it were certain that there has been no displacement of the soil on which the parietal was found, it is to be concluded that trepanation was practised in the Quaternary period when man was living amongst the large extinct pachydermata and felidae.
The neck is short, as are the legs with remarkably long feet, which are also very broad, the claws of a blunt form, and approximate in shape to the hoofs of the Pachydermata. They are partly webbed, and thus adapted to the aquatic life it enjoys, and which has gained for it the name of the water-hog.
The case of the Mastodon Andium is one of more difficulty, for it is found from latitude 36 degrees S., over, as I have reason to believe, nearly the whole of Brazil, and up the Cordillera to regions which, according to M. d'Orbigny, border on perpetual snow, and which are almost destitute of vegetation: undoubtedly the climate of the Cordillera must have been different when the mastodon inhabited it; but we should not forget the case of the Siberian mammoth and rhinoceros, as showing how severe a climate the larger pachydermata can endure; nor overlook the fact of the guanaco ranging at the present day over the hot low deserts of Peru, the lofty pinnacles of the Cordillera, and the damp forest-clad land of Southern Tierra del Fuego; the puma, also, is found from the equator to the Strait of Magellan, and I have seen its footsteps only a little below the limits of perpetual snow in the Cordillera of Chile.
Here the condyle is flattened, and the fossa of the temporal bone very shallow, presenting to the condyle an almost flat surface, so that the jawbone is enabled to revolve with ease for the better mastication of the pellets of grass. This conformation is also to be seen in the pachydermata who feed upon vegetables. The canines only require a separate notice.
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