ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. 267 
species which was thus, in so unusual a degree, brought to 
light, would have been at once pursued to their utmost 
legitimate boundary, in proof of the adaptation of the 
Mammoth to a Siberian climate; but, save the remark 
that the hairy covering of the Mammoth must have adapt- 
ed it for a more temperate zone than that assigned to ex- 
isting elephants,* no further investigations of the relation 
of its organization to its habits, climate, and mode of life, 
appear to have been instituted; they have in some in- 
stances, indeed, been rather checked than promoted. 
Dr. Fleming has observed that ‘no one acquainted with 
the gramineous character of the food of our Fallow-deer, 
Stag, or Roe, would have assigned a lichen to the Rein- 
deer.” But we may readily believe that any one cogni- 
zant of the food of the Elk, might be likely to have sus- 
pected cryptogamic vegetation to have entered more large- 
ly into the food of a still more northern species of the deer 
tribe. And I can by no means subscribe to another pro- 
position by the same eminent naturalist, that “the kind of 
food which the existing species of Elephant prefers, will 
not enable us to determine, or even to offer a probable 
conjecture concerning that of the extinct species.” The 
molar teeth of the Elephant possess, as we have seen, a 
highly complicated, and a very peculiar structure, and 
there are no other quadrupeds that derive so great a pro- 
portion of their food from the woody fibre of the branches 
of trees. Many mammals browse the leaves; some small 
rodents gnaw the bark; the Elephants alone tear down 
and crunch the branches, the vertical enamel-plates of their 
* “ Ta longue toison dont cet animal était couvert semblerait méme démontrer, 
qwil était organisé pour supporter un degré de froid plus grand que celui 
qui convient a l’éléphant de I’Inde.” Pictet, Paleontologie, 8yo. tom. i. 1844 
Bits ’ 
peas 
