ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. 219 
therefore, appealed with peculiar satisfaction to the testi- 
monies and records of analogous Mammalian fossils in the 
British Isles, to the origin of which it was obyious that 
the hypothesis of Roman or other foreign introduction 
within the historical period could not be made applicable. 
“Tf,” says the founder of paleontological science, ‘* pass- 
ing 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 Polyenus;* we 
shall, nevertheless, 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 below the surface. Sir Hans 
Sloane had obtained also the molars of an elephant from 
the county of Northampton, which were found im blue 
clay beneath vegetable mould and loam, from three to 
six feet below the surface: these specimens 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 of this kind on record, at the period 
of the publication of the ‘Ossemens Fossiles.’ 
Dr. Buckland adds the weighty objection, that the re- 
mains of these Elephants are usually accompanied in Eng- 
land, 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 na- 
tural historians of Ireland, Neville and Molineux, made 
known in 1715 the existence of fossil molar teeth of the 
* Lib. vi. c. 23. § 5. cited in Ossem. Fossiles, 4to, 1821, tom. 1. p. 134. 
