Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 2, 2025
A wide trail led to the edge of the stream, cut deep by the hoofs of tapirs, peccaries and other animals. Below, the water eddied lazily, as in a deep pool, before swirling away hurriedly further down. After a casual survey of his surroundings the Jaguar stooped and began lapping up the warm but satisfying liquid.
"Hist!" he whispered; "I saw some creatures coming down to the water to drink. They are tapirs; and if we are cautious we may shoot them." We crept along, keeping under cover of a bank, at one end of which we had formed our camp. Presently I saw two large animals, with long snouts somewhat resembling the trunks of elephants, but considerably shorter.
The vanguard of the unusual migration had already reached the spot and it teemed with life. The forest island covered many acres. There were deep, black pools in the unbroken shade; stealthy deer, tapirs, peccaries, and agoutis moved like shadows among the columnar trunks. A stream led from it into the distance that appeared greener and still more cheerful.
Several tapirs and a band of grunting peccaries were also seen, but all these were passed without molestation, for the ambitions of our hunters that day soared to nothing less than the tiger of the American jungles the sneaking, lithe, strong, and much-dreaded jaguar.
The seas still swarmed with serpentine monsters of the saurian type, and the firmer lands were peopled by huge animals, mastodons, bears, giant tapirs, mylodons, deinotheriums, and a score of other species too strange for them to recognise by any Earthly likeness, which roamed in great herds through the vast twilit forests and over boundless plains covered with grey-blue vegetation.
If we admit that coloured spots and stripes were first acquired as ornaments, how comes it that so many existing deer, the descendants of an aboriginally spotted animal, and all the species of pigs and tapirs, the descendants of an aboriginally striped animal, have lost in their adult state their former ornaments? I cannot satisfactorily answer this question.
None of our attendant natives had been in this part of the country before except a Punan, now adopted into the Kayan tribe, who knew it long ago and his memory at times seemed dimmed. Fresh tracks of rhinoceros and bear were seen and tapirs are known to exist among these beautiful wooded hills. Chonggat succeeded in shooting an exceedingly rare squirrel with a large bushy tail.
Originally the tapirs dwelt in the northern hemisphere, but there they gradually died out, the more specialized horse, and even for long ages the rhinoceros, persisting after they had vanished; and nowadays the surviving tapirs are found in Malaysia and South America, far from their original home.
But the tough stems of the grass had closed up again. The two fugitives were hidden. He saw the packed herd of the tapirs bearing down upon him; and, forgetting the insignificant creatures who had first roused his anger, he charged forward at full speed to meet this new foe.
Taphroderes distortus, enlarged left mandible of the male. Tapirs, longitudinal stripes of young. Tarsi, dilatation of front, in male beetles. Tarsius. Tasmania, half-castes killed by the natives of. Tasmanians, extinction of. Taste, in the Quadrumana. Tattooing, universality of. Taylor, G., on Quiscalus major. Taylor, Rev. R., on tattooing in New Zealand. Tea, fondness of monkeys for.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking