to seek for the living representative of the half-fabulous pinchaque; and he pursued his inquiries with the greater hope of success, as many of the ancient Spanish chroniclers, particularly Oviedo and P. de Agueda have mentioned the existence of a tapir of a brownish black colour, and furnished with thick hair, which has been considered as an erroneous description. The accounts of these old writers were, however, confirmed by the modern natives, particularly the Cargueros, who inhabit the valley of Cauca, &c., at the foot of the Paramo de Quindiu: these people informing the traveller, that a large species of tapir, answering to the description of Oviedo, inhabited the forests which skirt the eastern declivities of the Cordilleras, in the province of Mariquita, 500 or 600 mètres above the plains; the ordinary species being found only upon the latter, and in the valleys.

At the village of Bagota, M. Roulin had the gratification of seeing two specimens of the long-sought animal, which had been killed on the Paramo de Suma Paz, a mountain more elevated than that of Quindiu; and he afterwards was fortunate enough to obtain a head, which being conveyed to Paris, has been subjected to the inspection of Baron Cuvier. The examination of this great zootomist has revealed a very anomalous and unexpected fact, namely that the cranium of the new species approaches much more nearly in characters to that of the Indian, than of the previously known American tapir, and still more closely to that of the Palæotherium, an extinct genus, the remains of which are found in the tertiary beds of the Paris basin. Attached to his memoir, M. Roulin has presented figures of the crania, and thus enumerates their similitudes and differences:-The principal resemblances between the skulls of the new species and of the Sumatran tapir, consist in the general shape of the forehead, the defect of the projection of the parietal crest, the dimension of the nasal bones, and finally the form of the lower jaw, the inferior margin of which is straight, (in the Cayenne or South American species, it is strongly curved.) The differences between the cranium of this animal, and of the Palæotherium, are principally remarked in the forehead and nasal bones, which are more depressed in the former; and in the lower jaw, the posterior angle of which is more obtuse; the teeth are smaller, and the grinders do not so closely approach the ca

nines.

The principal external peculiarity which distinguishes the new tapir from both its congeners, is one that is strictly accordant with its locality in the temperate, or rather cold altitudes of the lofty mountain range which it inhabits. The body is entirely covered with long hair, of a blackish brown colour, darker at the points than at the roots;

whereas the other species, which fully share the high temperature of a tropical climate, are almost bare of fur. Its size is inferior to the others; the largest of the specimens seen at Bagota, measuring in length, from the muzzle to the point of the tail, only 5 feet 61⁄2 inches; and in height, at the shoulders, 2 feet 9 inches. The head differs from that of the common species of South America, not only in its general outline, but in its details: the muzzle varies a little in its form, and the proboscis does not present upon its sides those ridges which indicate a habitual contraction of that organ. On the chin is situated a white patch, which is prolonged from the angle of the mouth, and includes nearly half the upper lip. The ear is deficient of the white margin; and the remarkably erect crest, which in the ordinary American species commences above the eyes, and is continued, like a hogged mane, along the ridge of the neck to the withers, is also wanting; the neck being perfectly round, and the hair with which it is covered of the same length

as,

and lying in a direction similar to, that of the rest of the animal. On each side of the crupper is situated a large, naked, but not callous spot, about twice the size of the palm of the hand. Above the division of the toes the fetlock is margined with a narrow white band, as in the common American tapir. On this species its describer has bestowed the name of Tapir Pinchaque; thus identifying it with the traditionary histories of the natives of its habitat; and, under that denomination, Cuvier has given it a place in the new edition of the Regne Animal; but neither that able systematist, nor its discoverer, has furnished it with a Latin specific appellation.-ARCANA OF SCIENCE, 1833.

ORIGIN OF THE GRIFFIN.-M. Roulin, in the memoir on the tapir, just quoted, offers the following explanation of the origin of the griffin of the Greeks.

The Greeks who trafficed across the Black Sea, came in contact with the Scythians, and they, on their part, traded with the Argipeans, a Tartar people, with long chins, flat noses, and shaved heads, who inhabited the valleys at the foot of the Ural Mountains, the rich mines of which, no doubt, formed a constant theme of intelligence from the Scythians to the Greeks. In those early and superstitious ages every treasure was supposed to possess its peculiar guardian; and from obvious motives of policy, such warders were chosen as would appear not less redoubtable in their power than repulsively frightful in their appearance; and hence arose the compound images of the winged serpent, the dragon, and the griffin, with the beak of an eagle, and the claws of a lion. This last figure, our author conceives, was originally the guar dian monster of the treasures of the Ural

a

Mountains, the Cordilleras of the Argipeans, and that its representation and its fabulous history, were conveyed to the Grecians by the intervention of the Scythians, mingled with the traditions respecting the richuess of the gold mines, in a manner conformable with the spirit of the times.

This animal, as it is evident by the illustrations of M. Roulin's memoir, which we have copied, possesses, in its general outline, a close resemblance to the tapir in a sitting attitude (b); and that learned naturalist thus accounts for its possession of the various addenda of wings, crest, and tail:-It is evident, says he, that the original image of the griffin, when introduced into Greece, was destitute of wings; as Herodotus, the oldest author who describes it, does not mention them, and his very important silence upon that point, is a sufficient proof of the fact. But the more ancient dragons of the caverns of Greece, were nearly all furnished with those members; and, therefore, upon the introduction of a new monster, it would naturally appear requisite, according to the preconceived notions of the people, to add them to its figure; and it was no very great streich of imagination to accord the wings of an eagle to an animal which seemed already to possess its head; for the proboscis of the

tapir, when bent down in its usual position, bears no little similitude to the beak of that bird.

The sculptors, who considered the griffin in a picturesque point of view, employing it in their arabesque ornaments, again contributed to alter its original form. To bestow additional gracefulness to its neck, they surmounted it with a mane like that which decked their horses; making the hairs short, straight, and erect; or it is not impossible that they might, in reality, have retained the genuine mane of the tapir. Afterwards, to render still more fantastic a being which was already intermediate between a quadruped and a bird, they converted this crest into the likeness of the dorsal fin of a fish.

The division of the toes of the tapir caused, with the Greeks, the same error as with the Chinese in the fabrication of their mé; and accordingly, they substituted for them those of a lion. As to the tail, it was almost certain that they would attempt to supply that appendage; and whilst some merely gave to the animal one conformable with its feet, others, desiring to make the figure wholly imagi nary, bestowed upon it a spiral scroll, and ornamented it with the leaves of the acanthus.-ARCANA OF SCIENCE, 1833.