The family is fully as ancient as that of the Equidae, but the specialisation of the toes never advances so far. The modern representatives of the order are, so far as the feet are concerned, in the condition of very early representatives of the equine stock. Nor do the teeth of the Tapirs ever reach the complicated pattern of that presented by at least the modern Horses, or indeed of the Palaeotheres. Apart from this it is not an easy matter to distinguish accurately between these several families, including the Lophiodontidae, which, as already mentioned, is placed nearer to the Tapiridae than to the Palaeotheriidae. Indeed the differentiation of these two families, the Tapiridae and the Lophiodontidae, seems to be a matter of the greatest difficulty. The difficulty is well emphasised by the fact that naturalists disagree most profoundly as to the relations of various genera of extinct Tapir-like animals. For Mr. Lydekker the genus _Lophiodon_ includes also the American genera _Isectolophus_ and _Systemodon_, which are placed by Zittel in the sub-family Tapirinae as opposed to Lophiodontinae, which contains _Lophiodon_ and _Helaletes_. The existing Tapirs can be differentiated from the existing Horses with great ease, as the following account of the existing genera will show. {251} [Illustration] FIG. 128.--American Tapir. _Tapirus terrestris._ x 1/10. The genus _Tapirus_ is now met with only in South and Central America, and in the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Java and Sumatra. This animal is in many respects the most ancient of existing forms referable to the Perissodactyle order. It has four toes on the front-feet, though only three on the hind-feet. The number of teeth is 42--nearly the typical Eutherian number. The Tapirs are always moderately-sized animals, entirely covered with hair, and usually of a brownish-black colour. The Malayan Tapir is, however, banded broadly with white--a single band; the young of the Tapir is spotted, and striped with white. The nose and upper lip conjoined are produced into a short trunk, precisely comparable with that of the Elephant. As in the Rhinoceros--and in this both contrast with the other existing Perissodactyle genus _Equus_--the temporal fossa is not separated from the orbit by bone. Of existing Tapirs there are at any rate _T. terrestris_,[163] _T. roulini_ (the "Tapir Pinchaque" of Cuvier), _T. dowi_ and _T. bairdi_ in America (the last two being sometimes separated into a distinct genus, _Elasmognathus_, on account of the prolongation of the ossified mesethmoid), and _T. indicus_ in the East. The tapir, probably _T. terrestris_, is described by Buffon as "a dull and gloomy animal." It is certainly mainly nocturnal in habit. The name _terrestris_ was given by Linnaeus, who placed it in the same genus as {252} _Hippopotamus amphibius_; hence the epithet applied to the Tapir. But as a matter of fact it loves marshy neighbourhoods, and is in a way amphibious. This does not