208 REPORT—1843. 
Report on the British Fossil Mammalia. 
By Ricuarp Owen, Esq., F.R.S. 
Part Il. Ungulata. 
Order PACHYDERMATA. 
Genus Elephas. 
Wuen the science of fossil organic remains was less advanced than it is at 
present, when its facts and generalizations were new, and sounded strange 
not only to the ears of the unscientific but to anatomists and naturalists, the 
announcement of the former existence of animals in countries where the like 
had not been known within the memory of man, still more of species not 
known to exist in any part of the world, was received with distrust and 
doubt, and many endeavours were made to explain the former phenomena 
by reference to known circumstances that might have led to the introduc- 
tion of tropical animals into temperate zones within the historical period. 
When Cuvier first announced the existence of Elephants, Rhinoceroses and 
Hippopotamuses in the superficial unstratified deposits of continental Europe, 
he was reminded of the Elephants that were introduced into Italy by Pyrrhus 
in the Roman wars, and afterwards more abundantly, and with the stranger 
quadrupeds of conquered tropical countries, in the Roman triumphs and games 
of the amphitheatre. Cuvier’s minute anatomical distinctions, proving the 
disinterred fossils to have belonged to extinct species of Elephas, Hippopo- 
tamus, Rhinoceros, &c., were at first hardly appreciated, and, by some of his 
contemporaries, were explained away or dissallowed. Cuvier, therefore, ap- 
pealed with peculiar satisfaction to the testimonies and records of analogous 
Mammalian fossils in the British Isles, to the origin of which it was obvious 
that the hypothesis of Roman or other foreign introduction within the histo- 
rical period could not be made applicable. 
“Tf,” says the founder of paleontological science, “passing across the 
German Ocean, we transport ourselves into Britain, which, in ancient history, 
by its position, could not have received many living elephants besides that 
one which Cesar brought thither according to Polinzeus*; we shall, never- 
theless, find there fossils in as great abundance as on the continent.” 
Cuvier then cites the account given by Sir Hans Sloane of an elephant’s 
fossil tusk, disinterred in Gray’s Inn Lane, out of the gravel twelve feet be- 
low the surface. Sir Hans Sloane had obtained also the molars of an elephant 
from the county of Northampton, which were found in blue clay beneath 
vegetable mould and loam, from 8 to 6 feet below the surface; these spe- 
cimens were explained by Dr. Ciiper as having belonged to the identical 
elephant brought over to England by Cesar; but Cuvier remarks that too 
many similar fossils had been found in England to render that conjecture 
admissible. He then proceeds to quote the instances recorded at the period 
of the publication of the ‘Ossemens Fossiles.’ 
Dr. Buckland adds the weighty objection, that the remains of these Ele- 
phants are usually accompanied in England, as on the continent, by the bones 
of the Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus, animals which could never have been 
attached to Roman armies ; and I may add, that the natural historians of Ire-~ 
land, Neville and Molineux, made known in 1715 the existence of fossil molar 
teeth of the Elephant at Maghery, eight miles from Belturbet in the county of 
Cavan, and similar evidences of the Elephant have since been discovered in 
other localities of Ireland, where the armies of Cesar never set foot. Some 
other hypothesis must therefore be resorted to in order to explain these phe- 
nomena. 
* Lib. viii. c. 23. § 5, cited in Ossem. Fossiles, 4to, 1821, tom.i. p. 134. 
