IN THE LOWEK ANIMALS, ETC. 323 



hardly conceive the idea that the gigantic northern 

 elephant, extinct for untold ages, once forced his 

 way through the tangled forests of our land, and 

 was fitted, with his covering of long hair, and 

 closely-felted wool, to sustain the rigours of a still 

 more northern climate. The teeth of the Elephas 

 primigenius are found scattered throughout nearly 

 the whole of Europe, from the shores of the 

 Mediterranean to those of the Icy Sea. As they 

 are not confined to the continent, but are found 

 in the British islands, and even in Iceland, distant 

 as that island is from the European shores, we 

 may form some faint idea of the immense cycle of 

 geologic changes which must have taken place, 

 since the period when the elephant was a member 

 of the British Fauna. The tusks of the mammoth 

 (as the animal is also called) are not unfrequently 

 dredged up from the tertiary beds of a portion of 

 the British Channel; and specimens have come 

 under my notice, which have been brought into 

 the port of Dover by fishermen who had so ob- 

 tained them. The molar teeth are found in many 



bunt up all the Encyclopaedias on the article " Elephant." After adorning 

 the description with a few comments of his own, in which his imagina- 

 tion would play a very prominent part, it would pass as a very reliable 

 book upon the elephant. The German would think even the French- 

 man's way too demonstrative. He would not do so ; he would retire 

 to his study, he would put his fingers into his eyes, and his ears too, 

 and there, from the depths of his moral consciousness, he would develop 

 an elephant. And if you say to him, *' Well, that is not like an 

 elephant," he would say, "I cannot help that; that is what the elephant 

 i/rust be. If there is any discrepancy, the fault is in your elephant." 



V 2 



