Some authors express the opinion that the singular group of extinct animals known as dinocerata are ancestral forms of the elephant. The various species of dinoceros were animals of elephantine stature, but with shorter limbs; and their heads could reach the ground, so that there was no evident need of a proboscis. Indeed, certain animals may have possessed trunks, and not been elephants, if we may accept the restoration of Burmeister, who shows a pliocene, horse-like animal,—_Macrauchenia patagonia_,—with a proboscis. The head of the dinoceros must have presented a remarkable appearance, being provided with two long, sharp, canine teeth, and places for four horns. Whether the latter were present, or not, is not known. All the species that are known come from the Wyoming tertiary. In fact, the question is involved in darkness. Professor Cope considers that they all branched from some primitive stock in eocene times, and at one time stated that the coryphodon, an animal as large as an ox, with a wide elephantine pelvis, was a possible ancestor; but now I believe he looks still farther back, to a group he has termed _Taxepoda_. Professor Schmidt of the University of Strasburg says, “In entering upon a discussion of the elephants as a class, it was our wish to do away with what mystery seemed to encompass the existence of the present animal; and we have done so by pointing out their undoubted descent from the miocene mastodons.” The latter forms he considers to “have originated from ancestors of the dinotherium species;” but as to the ancestor of the dinotherium, the learned professor leaves us in the dark as much as ever. It is only within a few years that the genealogy of the horse has been regarded as worked out; and it may be only a matter of time before Cope, Marsh, Leidy, or others will present the world with the original elephant. CHAPTER VI. JUMBO (See Plate VII.).