The _Palæotherium_, _Anoplotherium_, and _Xiphodon_ were herbivorous animals, which must have lived in great herds. They appear to have been intermediate, according to their organisation, between the Rhinoceros, the Horse, and the Tapir. There seem to have existed many species of them, of very different sizes. After the labours of Cuvier, nothing is easier than to represent the _Palæotherium_ as it lived: the nose terminating in a muscular fleshy trunk, or rather snout, somewhat like that of the Tapir; the eye small, and displaying little intelligence; the head enormously large; the body squat, thick, and short; the legs short and very stout; the feet supported by three toes, enclosed in a hoof; the size, that of a large horse. Such was the great Palæotherium, peaceful flocks of which must have inhabited the valleys of the plateau which surrounds the ancient basin of Paris; in the lacustrine formations of Orleans and Argenton; in the Tertiary formations of Issil and Puy-en-Velay, in the department of the Gironde; in the Tertiary formations near Rome; and in the beds of limestone[82] at the quarries of Binsted, in the Isle of Wight. Fig. 151 represents the great Palæotherium, after the design, in outline, given by Cuvier in his work on _fossil bones_. [82] This limestone belongs to the Bembridge beds, and forms part of the Fluvio-marine series. See “Survey Memoir on the Geology of the Isle of Wight,” by H. W. Bristow. [Illustration: Fig. 152.--Skull of Palæotherium magnum.] The discovery and re-arrangement of these and other forms, now swept from the face of the globe, are the noblest triumphs of the great French zoologist, who gathered them, as we have seen, from heaps of confused fragments, huddled together pell-mell, comprising the bones of a great many species of animals of a former age of the world, all unknown within the historic period. The generic characters of Palæotherium give them forty-four teeth, namely, twelve _molars_, two _canines_, and twenty-eight others, three toes, a short proboscis, for the attachment of which the bones of the nose were shortened, as represented in Fig. 153, leaving a deep notch below them. The molar teeth bear considerable resemblance to those of the Rhinoceros. In the structure of that part of the skull intended to support the short proboscis, and in the feet, the animal seems to have resembled the Tapir. [Illustration: Fig. 153.--Skeletons of the Palæotherium magnum (_a_) and minimum (_b_) restored.]