“We have never, so far as I know, observed so much hair on any rhinoceros which has been brought to Europe in our times, as appears to have been presented by the head and feet we have described. I leave you then to decide if our rhinoceros of the Lena was born or not in the temperate climate of Central Asia. In fact, the rhinoceros, as I gather from the relations of travellers, belongs to the forests of Northern India; and it is likely enough that these animals differ in a more hairy skin from those which live in the burning zones of Africa, just in the same way that other animals of a hotter climate are less warmly covered than those of the same genera in temperate countries.”[93] [93] “Commentarii Academiæ Petersburgicæ,” p. 3. Of all fossil ruminants one of the largest and most singular is the _Sivatherium_, whose remains have been found in the valley of Murkunda, in the Sewalik branch of the Sub-Himalayan Mountains. Its name is taken from that of Siva, the Indian deity worshipped in that part of India. The _Sivatherium giganteum_ had a body as bulky as that of an ox, and bore a sort of resemblance to the living Elk. It combined in itself the characteristics of different kinds of Herbivores, at the same time that it was marked by individual peculiarities. The massive head possessed four deciduous, hollow horns, like the Prongbuck; two front ones conical, smooth, and rapidly rising to a point, and two hinder ones of larger size, and branched, projected forward above the eyes.[94] Thus it differed from the deer, whose solid horns annually drop off, and from the antelope tribe, sheep and oxen, whose hollow horns are persistent, and resembled only one living ruminant, the prongbuck, in having had hollow horns subject to shedding. Fig. 176 is a representation of the _Sivatherium_ restored, in so far, at least, as it is possible to do so in the case of an animal of which only the cranium and a few other bones have been discovered. [94] Dr. James Murie, _Geological Magazine_, vol. viii., p. 438. [Illustration: Fig. 176.--Sivatherium restored.] As if to rival these gigantic Mammals, great numbers of Reptiles seem to have lived in the Pliocene period, although they are no longer of the same importance as in the Secondary epoch. Only one of these, however, need occupy our attention, it is the _Salamander_. The living Salamanders are amphibious Batrachians, with smooth skins, and rarely attaining the length of twenty inches. The Salamander of the Tertiary epoch had the dimensions of a Crocodile; and its discovery opens a pregnant page in the history of geology. The skeleton of this Reptile was long considered to be that of a human victim of the deluge, and was spoken of as “_homo diluvii testis_.” It required all the efforts of Camper and Cuvier to eradicate this error from the minds of the learned, and probably in the minds of the vulgar it survived them both.