This strange group of creatures flourished in great numbers on the borders of an old lake of Miocene age. The Brontops was a heavy massive animal, larger than any of the Dinocerata, with a length of twelve feet, not including the tail, and a height of eight feet. The limbs are shorter than those of the elephant, which it nearly equalled in size. As in the tapir, there were four toes to the front limbs, and three to the hind limbs. Its skull was of a peculiar shape, shallow, and very large. That of Brontops ingens is thirty-six inches long, and twenty inches between the tips of the two horns, or protuberances. The creature was probably provided with an elongated, flexible nose, like that of the tapir, but not longer, because the length of the neck shows that it could reach the ground without the aid of a trunk such as the elephant's. It is doubtful if the two prominences on the front of the skull were provided with horns, for, if directed forwards, they would interfere with the animal when grazing. [Illustration: Fig. 45.--Skeleton of Brontops robustus. (After Marsh.)] CHAPTER XI. SOME INDIAN MONSTERS. "What a glorious privilege it would be, could we live back--were it but for an instant--into those ancient times when these extinct animals peopled the earth! to see them all congregated together in one grand natural menagerie--these mastodons and elephants, so numerous in species, toiling their ponderous forms and trumpeting their march in countless herds through the swamps and reedy forests!"--Hugh Falconer. It is a far cry back, against the sun's path, from Wyoming and the flanks of the Rocky Mountains to the sacred Himalayas--the "abode of snow"--of Northern India. But if the reader will follow us to that country, we will endeavour to describe two or three out of many strange and now lost forms of life brought to light from the famous Sivalik Hills, on the southern border of the Himalayas, for the knowledge of which Science is greatly indebted to a very distinguished palæontologist, the late Mr. Hugh Falconer. Together with his friend Captain Cautley (afterwards Sir Proby Cautley), he explored this region, and their joint arduous labours show that it was at one time inhabited by a very large and varied group of quadrupeds, together with many birds, reptiles, fishes, mollusca, and crustaceans. In this region there lived, throughout a considerable part of the Tertiary period, elephants, of various species, whose skulls and bones were found in great numbers; mastodons (a closely allied form); and several species of hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and horse: among ruminants, species of the camel, the ox, the stag, and the antelope, together with a colossal creature unknown before, the Sivatherium, which has never been found elsewhere; a huge tortoise, and various species of carnivora, rodents, and apes.