Lastly this early Chinese account of the tapir is interesting in that it anticipates, by exactly four hundred years, Major Farquhar's discovery of the tapir in Malacca. There will be found in Volume XIII of "Asiatick Researches," published in Calcutta in 1820, a very interesting account of this discovery. Major Farquhar, who was Governor in Malacca, wrote from Malacca on the 29th January 1616 the following letter to the Honourable A. Seton:
My dear Sir,
Conceiving that the accompanying account of an animal of the tapir kind, found in the forests in the vicinity of Malacca; but which I believe is not generally known to exist in any part of the old world, may prove interesting, I have taken the liberty to transmit it to you, for the purpose, (should you consider it as meriting public attention), of being presented to the Asiatic Society: I have likewise the pleasure to send a full length drawing of the animal, and a drawing and skeleton of its head, which is of very singular shape.
- I remain My Dear Sir,
- Your much obliged and very faithful servant,
- W. FARQUHAR.
Malacca, 29th January 1816.
Major Farquhar's account, after a detailed description of the dentition and dimensions of the animal, is as follows:—
"The tapir (called tinnoo by the Malays) is an animal, which I believe has hitherto boon considered, by the naturalists as being peculiar to the New World; it will however appear abundantly evident from the present account, that this is a mistake; and that a species at least of this quadruped is common to many of the forests on the Malay Peninsula, and particularly so in the vicinity of Malacca, being as well known to the natives there as the elephant or rhinoceros. The tapir of Malacca, although differing in some essential points from that of America, cannot, I conceive, be considered but as a variety of the same genus of quadruped.
