2 THE BOOK OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM 



It is pleasant to recognize, too, that it is not alone from the point 

 of view of size that the huge monster under consideration should be 

 given a foremost position among the mammalian members of the 

 animal kingdom of whom such a number of pictorial representations 

 are here given and whose life-histories are accorded attention. 



Possessing, as the philosopher Pliny has well and truly said, 

 at least three vastly important qualities which are worthy of imitation 

 by human kind — honesty, prudence and equity — and an ancestry 

 which is deserving of more than passing notice, the Elephant is a 

 patriarch among animal folk upon whom much attention has been 

 devoted right away from the dim and misty past until the present 

 day. 



To-day, when the mammalian fauna is in many instances becom- 

 ing so scantily represented in several parts of the world, for reasons 

 which at this juncture it is not necessary to dilate upon, it seems 

 difficult to realize that the old-time ancestor of the Elephant was a 

 huge Mammoth with a hairy coat, and large, curiously curved tusks, 

 the points of which were turned towards each other instead of out- 

 ward, as in many Elephants who roamed about in Siberia and other 

 parts of Asia, as well as in England. 



Tusks and teeth of this Mammoth are being frequently found, 

 and in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, London, 

 there is exhibited a whole skull with enormous tusks, a curious 

 epitaph of a past mammalian giant which was discovered in a brick- 

 field at Ilford in Essex. Sir Ray Lankester gives this interesting 

 information in his valuable work on Extinct Animals, and states 

 that when a boy he used to obtain many remains of Mammoth, 

 Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus from this same brick-field. This 

 statement illustrates how important it is for the student of animals 

 to pay attention to all parts of the country, for underneath the soil — 

 as well as upon it — wonderful secrets remain hidden which are only 

 waiting to be revealed. 



I have before now been in the company of a party of field 

 naturalists who did not deem it expedient to explore the neighbour- 

 hood of a disused clay-pit. Who knows but that some hidden 

 Mammoth lay below the surface? These and others might with 

 advantage take note of Sir Ray Lankester's discovery in the brick- 

 field to which allusion has been made, and profit accordingly. 



Before passing on to a consideration of the life-history of the 

 African and Indian Elephants, it should be stated that in the United 



