Qn some Quadrupeds supposed to be extinct, 357 



grinders and bones of younger individuals, and fragments of 

 tusks : fossil molares of the rhinoceros, resembling two species 

 of a genus named by Cuvier Anthracotherium : bones like an 

 animal of the horse kind: remains of crocodiles, supposed to 

 be the gavial, or long-nosed alligator of the Ganges, (not now 

 known in the rivers of Ava.) The fossil bones were upon or 

 near the surface, more or less exposed, not decomposed or 

 rolled, and are of animals that died there. The bones are 

 petrified, and deeply coloured with iron, the substance siliceous 

 and very hard. The blocks of wood are larger than the trees 

 growing there, but it is not known if they are of the same 

 kind. " An idle notion is entertained by many, that these 

 •fossil remains have been generated by a petrifying quality in 

 the water of the Irawaddy*, but I think they are the result, as 

 elsewhere, of one of the last catastrophes ; in fact, the remains 

 of a former world, before man was called into existence." — 

 Morning Herald, Sept. 14, 1827. 



Bones of the mastodon have been found in Europe, mixed 

 with menagerie collections, which cannot possibly be attributed 

 to any other origin than that of sports of the amphitheatre. 

 They are found in western Siberia, which was conquered by 

 Sheibani, Genghis Khan's grandson, a. d. 1242, and held 300 

 years, and whose first capital was at Tiumin f, on the river 

 Tura, near the Ural mountains, where the remains of the mas- 

 todon were found. Ava was conquered by the Grand Khan 

 Kublai in 1272, in a battle with the king of eastern Bengal, 

 in which there were a thousand elephants J. The places where 

 they have been found in America correspond with history and 

 tradition so faithfully, as to assist the other numerous proofs of 

 Mexico and Peru having been conquered by the Moguls, in 

 the year 1283, and the bones of the- mastodon are there 

 found, as well as remains of elephanfsy precisely like those of 

 Siberia §. With regard to the tooth found at Harwich, the 



* Duchat, an author of unquestioned credit, has seen recent wood 

 petrified into flint by the water of a river in Ava. Rees's Cyc, " Wood." 



•I' Levesque, Hist, de Russie, vol. vii. 244. 



X Wars and Sports, p. 263. 



§ Conquest of Peru, ch. x. It is somewhat curious that, when P3T- 

 rhus for the first time brouglit elephants into Italy, tlie Romans <;ave 

 them the name of Lucanian bulls; and that the Aiw^jiipai^s Q^ them 



