7 
trawling brought up from the bed of the old meadows over 2000 
teeth. We would give something to have witnessed that wealth of 
life (and such life) which met the eyes of primeval Man, but which 
now has well-nigh vanished, leaving us, as Mr. Wallace has said, in 
‘¢an impoverished world.” A few, very few, living travellers have 
been favoured with such a sight in America, or in Africa, but they 
never will again; buffalo, giraffe, zebra, and elephant are rapidly 
following the old Mammoths. But we must not linger on such 
pictures, or waste our time in regrets; our business this evening 
lies with the ancient elephants. , 
In order that we may be able to comprehend wl at follows more 
fully something must be said about the zoological. group to which 
the old Mammoth and the present elephants belong, and about its 
position relatively to other groups. 
Once included in the orler Uneunata, or Hoofed Animals, it has 
been found necessary with the advance of our knowledge respecting 
them to detach the trunk-bearing species, and to form them into an 
independent and somewhat isolated order, viz., Prososcmga, 
characterized not merely by the possession of a trunk, but also by 
certain special features of the feet and teeth, which are so different 
and yet related to those of horses, cattle, and deer. And in this 
mat’er of separation, as in so many other instances, we are reminded 
again of the close interweaving of the threads of that web which 
connects all Nature together ; of the impossibility of fixing upon 
any one feature or character by means of which to separate one 
group from another. We find the same or closely similar features 
or habits in animals and plants of widely different orders,—a result. 
no doubt of the prevalence and influence at different times and in 
different places of similar physical surroundings. Just as we find 
the development of climbing organs in totally different grounps of 
plants, so there are other animals besides ‘‘ Proboscideans ” possess- 
ing a proboscis, varying in almost every possible degree. It would be. 
& very easy task to arrange a graduated succession of forms, 
beginning with the mobile upper lip of the horse, passing on by the 
lip-finger of the giraffe and the rhinoceros, by the incipient trunk 
of the tapir, and so on to the full-formed organ of our elephants. 
And yet for very cogent reasons the zoologist cannot place them all. 
together. To the Evolutionist the Proboscidea proper are con- 
fessedly a puzzle, they seem to have sprung into exist«nce almost.’ 
all at once as it were; none of them can be regarded as the pro- 
genitor of the others, nor has any other form yet been discovered 
likely to have been, ‘Our present elephant,” says one authority, 
‘is one of the strangest and most enigmatical forms.’ In the 
genealogical tree by which an attempt has been made to show the- 
pedigree of the various orders of the Mammalia the elephant branch 
is a detached branch, not to be followed down to its junction with 
