218 PROBOSCIDIA. 
ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. Mammoth. 
Ellephas primigenius, BLUMENBACH, Voigt’s Maga- 
. zine, Bd. v. 
Eléphant fossile ou Mammouth des Russes, Cuvier, Annales du Muséum, 
tom. vill. Ossem. Fossiles, t. i. 
Fossil Elephant, BuckiaNnp, Reliquie Diluvi- 
ane, p- 171. 
Elephas primigenius or Mammoth, Owen, Report of British Asso- 
ciation, 1843. 
Wuen the science of fossil organic remains was less. 
advanced than it is at present, when its facts and generali- 
zations were new, and sounded strange not only to ears 
unscientific but to anatomists and naturalists, the an- 
nouncement of the former existence of animals in countries 
where the like had not been known within the memory of 
man, still more of species that had never been seen alive 
in any part of the world, was received with distrust and 
doubt, and many endeavours were made to explain these 
phenomena by reference to circumstances which experience 
showed to have led to the introduction of tropical animals 
into temperate zones within the historical period. 
When Cuvier first announced the presence of remains of 
Klephants, Rhinoceroses and Hippopotamuses in the super- 
ficial 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 con- 
quered tropical countries, in the Roman triumphs and 
games of the amphitheatre. The minute anatomical 
distinctions by which the great Comparative Anatomist 
proved the disinterred fossils to have belonged to extinct 
species of Hlephas, Hippopotamus, Rhinoceros, &c., were 
at first hardly appreciated, and, by some of his contem- 
yoraries, were explained away or disallowed. Cuvier, 
I ’ I y : 
