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228 GEOGKAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. [part IV.
discovered. Elephants ranged over all the Palsearctic and
Nearctic regions in Post-Pliocene times ; in Europe and Central
India they go bacls to the Pliocene ; and only in India to the
Upper Miocene period ;
go back to the older formations.
the number of species increasing as we
In North America two or three species of Mastodon are Post-
pliocene and Pliocene ; and a species is found in the caves of
Brazil, and in the Pliocene deposits of the pampas of La Plata,
of the Bolivian Andes, and of Honduras and the Bahamas.
In Europe the genus is Upper Miocene and Pliocene, but is espe-
cially abundant in the former period. In the East, it extends
from Perim island to Burmah and over all India, and is mostly
Miocene, but with perhaps one species Pliocene in Central
India.
An account of the range of such animals as belong to extinct
families of Proboscidea, will be found in Chapters VI. and VII.
from which it will be seen that, although the family Elephantidse
undoubtedly originated in the Eastern Hemisphere, it is not
improbable that the first traces of the order Proboscidea are to
be found in N, America.
Order IX.~HYRACOIDEA.
Family 54.-HYEACID^. (1 Genus. 10-32 Species.)
Neotropical
St;b-regions.
Nearctic
s15b-eegi0ns.
General Distribution,
PaL/EARCTIC
Sub-regions.
Ethiopian
Sub-regions.
- —2. 1.2.3
Oriental
Sub-regions.
Australian
Sub-regions.
The genus Hyrax, which alone constitutes this family, consists
of small animals having the appearance of hares or marmots,
but which more resemble the genus Rldnoccros in their teeth and
skeleton. They range all over the Ethiopian region, except Mada-
gascar ; a peculiar species is found in Eernando Poy and they
just enter the Palsearctic as far as Syria. They may therefore
be considered as an exclusively Ethiopian group. In Dr. Gray's
;
I