with the fossil bones of elephants is, that we have scarcely any record of their being found in those countries where the race still exists,-in Southern Asia, and in Africa. In America, on the contrary, where the animal has never been known since the discovery of Columbus, they have been dug up in considerable abundance. In North America they have been discovered, especially upon the borders of the Copper River, of the Ohio, of the Susquehana, and in Carolina. Throughout the northeastern States, particularly, the bones of the elephant are dug up in the same places with those of the mastodon, one of the largest of the extinct quadrupeds; and they have been generally found, upon comparison with the remains of this race, in a more advanced state of decomposition. Of such bones there is an immense deposit at Kentucky, about thirty-six miles from the confluence of the Ohio. In Mexico, also, bones of elephants have been found; and it is a remarkable fact, that in a Mexican hieroglyphic of undoubted authority, a sacrificing priest is represented with his head covered with a casque, in which the trunk of an elephant may be . traced; or at least of some animal possessing a form approaching this great characteristic of the elephant species. Had the people of Aztlan," says Humboldt," originally from Asia, preserved some vague notions of the elephant? or had their traditions (which appears to be much less probable) gone back to the epoch when America was inhabited by those gigantic animals whose skeletons are found buried in the marly lands, upon the back even of the Mexican Cordilleras? Perhaps there exists in the north-west part of the new continent, in countries which neither Hearne, nor Mackenzie, nor Lewis have visited, an unknown animal of the pachydermatous order, hold

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ing a middle place, by the configuration of his trunk, between the elephant and the tapir*.”

* Vues des Cordillères; Planche xv.

Mexican Hieroglyphic.

Skull of the Fossil Elephant.-Elephas Primigenius, BLUMENBACH,

CHAPTER XV.

THE unwearied researches of modern naturalists, and of M. Cuvier beyond all others, have established the fact that the fossil elephant was an essentially distinct species from the elephants of Africa and of India. Of course such a conclusion could not have been arrived at without the most diligent comparison of the remains of the extinct species with skeletons of those which are existing; and it is evident that these comparisons could not have been relied upon had they been founded only upon a few specimens of the

fossil elephant. But the great abundance of bones which have been collected in Europe, in Asia and even in America,-which have been preserved in cabinets, and described with the utmost minuteness, -and above all, which M. Cuvier has examined himself with that profound skill in comparative anatomy which renders his authority indisputable,-leave no doubt whatever upon the soundness of the conclusions at which he has arrived. It appears then, that the Fossil Elephant (Elephas primigenius, BLUMENBACH)-the Mammoth of the Russians, was from fifteen to eighteen feet in height, covered (at least in the species which existed in Siberia) with two sorts of clothing—a thick wool, four or five inches long, of a fawn colour, and partially with long rigid hair forming a mane extending down his back. His resemblance to the Indian elephant, as distinguished from the African, was principally in the elongated conformation of his skull, and the cavity of his forehead. But he differed from both the living species, 1st. in the laminæ of the molar teeth (the teeth themselves being generally larger), which are narrower and more mumerous, and separated by slenderer lines of enamel, less festooned than in those of the Indian species*; 2ndly, in the forms of the lower jaw, and of many other bones; and, lastly, the most important distinction, in the much greater length of the alveoles (sockets) of his tusks. Cuvier considers that this striking difference would singularly modify the whole figure, particularly the organization of the trunk, and give the animal an essentially different physiognomy from that of the Indian speciest. The tusks of the fossil elephant appear to have been very large, (per

* See page 84.

For the fullest details of the comparison between the fossil remains of elephants and the analogous parts of the existing species, see Cuvier, Ossemens fossiles (edit, 1821), tom. i. fol. 159 to 204.

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haps not of a larger size than those of the existing species would attain to, if undisturbed by man,) turned outwards, and more or less arched into a spiral form. Its general proportions were heavier and more clumsy than those of the living races; and it appears, particularly in the Lena elephant, that the soles of the feet were considerably dilated, as if pressed out by the weight of the body.

However curious may be the facts which we have briefly laid before the reader, to shew that elephant remains being distributed throughout the world in places now uninhabited by that race of quadrupeds, there was a period in which this animal was indigenous to Europe, to the Northern parts of Asia, and even to America,-these facts acquire a double interest when they are viewed in connexion with other circumstances, resting upon similar evidence, which exhibit the condition of animated nature at the time when these animals lived. The fossil remains, such as we have described, are generally found in sandy and slimy plains,—in the loose and superficial strata of the earth,-in places which are washed by brooks and rivers; but never in the more elevated regions amongst the primitive, secondary, or tertiary chains. In these slightly consolidated strata, called by geologists diluvian formations, are the bones of the elephant discovered mixed up with other bones, some of quadrupeds of existing genera, and some, which, as far as we know, are utterly extinct. To the very borders of the Icy Sea, and even in the isles within the Arctic Circle, we find remains which have a general resemblance to those of the quadrupeds which now inhabit the torrid zone; but yet no one species is absolutely the same. The bones of the elephant are discovered in the same strata with those of other gigantic pachydermatous animals,-the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus-of the horse,