264 BRITISH MAMMALS 



the mammoth, there has been excessive development of hair 

 in various parts : in the human on the top of the head, in 

 the mammoth on the sides of the body. Whenever a beast 

 develops enormous tusks, it is a sure prelude to the complete 

 disappearance in any form of those teeth in the degenerate 

 species. 



The African elephant is, in some respects, a little less 

 specialised than the Indian, and the two species (at one time dis- 

 tinguished as different genera) form the types of the two main 

 groups of modern elephants. To the African type belongs 

 Elephas meridionalis (perhaps the largest of the True Elephants), 

 a beast which stood 1 3 ft. high at the shoulder ; also Elephas 

 antiquus. Both of these were found in England, perhaps con- 

 temporaneously with man. Elephants of the African type were 

 also found in India anciently, an interesting fact as illustrating 

 the theory that the true elephants were developed from the 

 mastodons from the Stegodont form in Eastern Asia, whence 

 the ancestors of the modern African elephant travelled through 

 the Mediterranean regions to Africa, while other forms of this 

 "African" type penetrated nearly as far as Great Britain. It is 

 thought, however, that these "African" elephants, together with 

 other creatures now associated with the tropical regions, did not 

 penetrate much farther north than Yorkshire, and did not reach 

 either Scotland or Ireland. 



Elephas primigenius. The Mammoth 



The Mammoth is a development of the Indian group of 

 elephants, which differs from the African in the more complicated 

 structure of the molars, in the smaller ear, in the shape of the 

 head, and in some other points. The mammoth originated 

 probably in Asia, and its first great area of distribution was 

 Central or North-central Asia, from which direction it spread 

 westward as far as Ireland, and eastward into Northern America.^ 



^ The reader might be again reminded here that as far as the revelations 

 of palseontology go, the American Continent has had but a sparse share of 

 the great Proboscideans. The mastodon developed something like fourteen 



