BY THE REV. C. H. MIDDLETON, B.A.

MOST persons who are at all acquainted with natural history, are well aware that the classification of animals is not always a simple matter, that "any attempt to divide living beings by distinct lines of demarcation, as we mark out the minor divisions of a great kingdom on a map, are hopeless, unless we submit to endless exceptions, to frequent inconveniences, and occasional absurdities." There are creatures which in external appearance, in habits, or it may be in osteological or visceral formation, seem to belong rather to one class while they are actually members of another. The student of comparative anatomy feels no surprise at this-his surprise is to find the gradations from one typical form to another so incomplete. Between nearly all groups there are found intermediate forms, connecting links of greater or less importance; thus the Colugo, or flying lemur, to some extent connects the monkey and the bat; the Aard wolf (Proteles cristatus) comes between the hyena and the civet. The hyrax appears to present one of these intermediate or transition forms; for a long time it was regarded as a Rodent, and certainly a plantigrade creature, about the size of an ordinary wild rabbit, with thick, soft brown fur, and incisor-like teeth, with large brilliant eyes set forward in the head, and a moustachioed muzzle, living among rocks and in holes in banks, had some claim to be classed among hares and rabbits; and taking it to be, as it undoubtedly is, the Shâphân, or "coney" of Scripture, identified with the coney by the Rabbinical writers, classed with the hare in the sacred books,

Leviticus xi. 5; Deut. xiv. 7, there seems an apparent prescription in its favour.*

An examination of the skeleton and the intestinal canal shows that it is not a Rodent at all, but that it is a Pachyderm, allied to the horse and the hippopotamus, coming, among now existing animals, between the rhinoceros and the tapir-creatures as unlike it to all outward appearance as can well be conceived. H. N. Turner, in his proposed arrangement of the Perissodactyla, classes in order-Rhinoceros, Acerotherium (fossil), Elasmotherium (fossil), Hyrax, Palæotherium (fossil), Paloptotherium (fossil), Tapirus, etc. Professor Huxley, see Medical Times, of May 23rd, speaking of the classification of mammalia, tells us that though Cuvier endeavoured to prove hyrax a true Pachyderm, yet Milne-Edwards, from an investigation of certain peculiarities of its internal economy, considers that it has affinity with both Pachyderms and Rodents.

Naturalists speak of several species of hyrax, but I cannot make out more than five, if indeed variety is not rather the word to use of two of them. Perhaps the best known is the Hyrax Capensis, the rock-rabbit of South Africa; its habits are very similar to those of the H. Syriacus; each lives among the rocks, and is fond of basking in the sun, "feeding with apparent carelessness on the aromatic herbage of the mountain side; it is, however, tolerably secure, in spite of its apparent negligence, for a sentinel is always on guard ready to warn his companions by a peculiar shrill cry of the approach of danger." A second species is H. arboreus, described by Colonel Hamilton Smith; "it lives," he says, "in the hollows of decayed trees, which it climbs easily;" beyond this little is known. A third is Hyrax Habessinicus, which is found in great numbers in the Somali country, in Eastern Africa, latitude 9° north, longitude 47° east, reported upon by Captain J. H. Speke; I can learn no particulars of this. Again, there is H. dorsalis, described by Mr. Louis Frazer, Her Majesty's Consul at Whidah, as frequenting the island of Fernando Po, in the Bight of Biafra, of which Mr. Waterhouse writes, that he believes it to be entirely distinct from both H. Capensis and Syriacus, and is inclined to class it apart from arboreus. It is nocturnal in its habits, sleeps in trees all day, and feeds on leaves, etc., at night; though difficult to find, it is no doubt common, since its loud and peculiar cry is nightly heard during the rainy season; its native name is Naybar. Shaw in General Zoology, vol. ii. part 1, refers to a Hudson's

Curiously enough, in the Septuagint, where the coney and the hare are both referred to, we find τον δασυποδα και τον χοιρογρύλλιον, where, in Psalm civ. 18 (Psalm ciii. of LXX.), the English translation has "conies," the word used is Xolpoypuλλiots (in textu Grabii Aaywois). In Proverbs xxx. 26, for " "conies" again we find οι χοιρογρύλλιοι.

Bay hyrax, which "has two upper and four lower front rodentlike teeth; its feet are tetradactylous, like those of the Cape hyrax, and it has rounded claws on all the toes." I think this hyrax was known to no one else. The Abyssinian hyrax described by Bruce, and that found in Syria and Arabia, are probably identical, H. Syriacus. In the latter countries, he tells us it "is called Israel's sheep, or Gaunim Israel, from its frequenting the rocks of Horeb and Sinai, where the children of Israel made their forty years' peregrination."

There is a singular error in Griffith's Cuvier, vol. v. He says that the H. Syriacus differs from the South African species principally" in having only three toes on the anterior feet," and (which is correct) "long bristles or hairs dispersed over the upper part of the body." Again, in his description of the genus Hyrax, he gives "toes before, four or three; behind four," and, where he is as certainly wrong, 66 eyes small."

The specimen from which the accompanying drawing of the skeleton is taken was sent from Mar Saba, a deep rocky ravine in the wilderness of Judæa; it is that of a young adult male. The skin has been sacrificed that the skeleton might be perfect. The spinal column, it will be seen, is very close set; it contains seven cervical, twenty dorsal, eight lumbar vertebræ, add to these five sacral and six coccygeal. In the Cape hyrax Mr. Martin found seven cervical, twenty dorsal, and nine lumbar. Professor Owen also, when writing of the same species, gives twenty-nine as the dorso-lumbar vertebræ. Mr. Martin counts in Capensis the sacral and coccygeal as fourteen. In the H. Syriacus I can only make eleven. He gives for H. Capensis seven true and fourteen false ribs. In H. Syriacus there are seven true and thirteen false. These differences are curious in animals so nearly allied as the two species must be. The number of ribs on a side, twenty, is only exceeded in one mammal, the Bradypus didactylus, or two-toed sloth, which has twenty-two; no other quadruped approaches it; while its congeners the rhinoceros and tapir, have respectively sixteen and eighteen.*

The most marked peculiarity of the skull is the size and strength of the lower jaw, which is unusually massive, nothing we know of in the economy of the animal seeming to require a jaw so powerful; there is, in proportion, a greater depth and strength

*Professor Owen in his paper on the "Anatomy of the Auroch" writes:"The constancy in the number of the true vertebra in the Artiodactyle Ungulates is the more remarkable and demonstrative of their natural co-affinity, by contrast with the variable number of those vertebræ in the odd-toed, or Perisodactyle group, in which we find twenty-two dorso-lumbar vertebræ in the rhinoceros, twentythree in the tapir or palæotherium, and as many as twenty-nine in the little hyrax."

of the horizontal ramus, and a greater convexity of the ascending ramus than in other known quadrupeds. In hyrax, as in the armadilloes, the muscular system has this great peculiarity, that the digastric muscle of the lower jaw arises from the upper part of the sternum instead of from the occiput or temporal bone, and it is inserted into the whole ramus or angle of the lower jaw. It is of remarkable size and strength, and it is this muscle which occasions the peculiar fulness of the neck in hyrax. The general conformation of the skull is wide shaped and compact, and somewhat abrupt anteriorly; the eye sockets are large, and placed forward; the auditory meatus is small, a well-developed post-tympanic process seems to take the place of the mastoid. The dentition presents a marked resemblance to that of the rhinoceros. The molars are fourteen in each jaw, the larger ones being placed farthest back, the anterior ones are said to fall out soon after the animal has attained its full growth; they have not been shed in the skeleton before me. In Cuvier I read that two canines are found in the upper jaw of the young animal, but there are no traces of any here. The incisors are two above, placed apart, and four below, the outer pair being much larger than the inner ones.

The fore feet, as in the elephant, have each four digits; they are the second, third, fourth, and fifth. (In this specimen is seen a rudimentary first digit, which, however, is probably abnormal.) Each digit is buried in the skin as far as the little hoof or nail, which, however, only covers the upper, not the lower surface. The whole foot is placed to the ground, and has a callous sole. (All other Pachydermata are, I believe, digitigrade.) The hind foot, which bears a striking resemblance to that of the rhinoceros, has only three digits, the second, third, and fourth; the third and fourth having nails like the fore feet, the second being armed with a claw, curved and pointed; the fore part of the astragalus is divided into two very unequal facets; the os magnum and the digitus medius which it supports are large. The stomach is certainly not that of a ruminant, though it to some extent approaches that type. It has strong muscular fibres about the middle, which partially constrict it, and serve in some degree to divide it into two pouches; the organ is at this part folded upon itself, but there is no valve between these pouches and no intermediate receptacle for undigested food. Mr. R. Reed says of the Cape hyrax that the specimens he shot had their stomachs much distended with scarcely masticated food, and further says of one he had in confinement that he had heard it chewing its food by night, he believes ruminating when everything around was quiet. The small intestine, which is not much thicker than a goose-quill, has about twelve glandular pouches from

three to five inches apart, about three lines in depth, with their orifices placed towards the cœcum. Their use is not very

clear.

The cœcum has a great analogy to that of the hare, and other Rodents, being sacculated and distended with a black pultaceous matter; in form one would compare it with that of the tapir, its magnitude arising more from its breadth than its length. The whole length of the intestinal canal is about six times the length of the animal Owen adds, in looking at the vertebrata for an analogous form of intestinal canal, hyrax stands nearly alone. Among mammalia it is only in a few of the Edentata that the double cœcum is met with, as in myrmecophaga, didactyla, and dasypus 6-cinctus; while in birds, although the double cœcum more generally prevails, yet an additional single cœcum anterior to these has only been found in a few species. In the bird, however, the single anterior cœcum exhibits merely a trace of structure peculiar to embryonic life, in hyrax it evidently performs an important part of digestion. He considers that the double cœcum of hyrax indicates an affinity to the group which intervenes in the system of Cuvier between the order in which it was originally placed and the one to which Cuvier transferred it. It is interesting to note that while the facies of hyrax so far simulates that of a rodent as to have deceived the older naturalists, yet nature, as if in abhorrence to the saltus, has left in the internal structure an impression borrowed from the type of the Edentata.

swer.

The question whether hyrax ruminates is not easy to anI have the authority of Professor Huxley for asserting that the non-possession of a ruminant stomach is no proof that the action is impossible, and cases are recorded on the part of the hare, the kangaroo, and even of man himself, though in each of these it has certainly been an abnormal act. The stomach of the hyrax, partially constricted by a sphincter muscle, and having no cardiac valve, renders it perfectly possible that it is a habit of the animal generally, as it certainly seems to have been of the one kept by Mr. Reed, referred to above.

The soft, deep fur of the hyrax is unique among the Pachyderms, and more closely resembles that of the Rodents in appearance; its microscopic character is however totally unlike theirs. The close hair of the peccary is bristly, more like the long, black, erinaceous hairs which are scattered over the coat of the hyrax. Bruce imagined that it was from these hairs that the animal derived its Abyssinian name of Ashkoko, from ashkok, a thorn. These hairs are absent in Capensis. The fur, which is of a greyish-brown, does not, as before stated, extend to the under surface of the feet. The ears are small, rounded, and white within; the snout, which in every other species of