MAMMALIA. 439 



their remains nearly all over the world. When young, mastodonts are 

 provided with two small, short, and straight tusks at the lower jaw, a 

 character upon which was founded the genus Tetracaulodon, alluding to 

 the presence of four tusks. 



The genus Elephas com{)rehends the largest of the terrestrial mammals 

 now living. They are provided with molar teeth or grinders, the bodies 

 of which are composed of a variable number of vertical laminas, bony in 

 their structure, but enveloped with enamel and cemented together by a 

 third substance called cortical or cement. These grinders succeed each 

 other from behind forwards and not vertically, as in most species 'of 

 Mammalia. As fast as one tooth is worn, it is pushed forwards by that 

 which comes after it ; hence it happens that the elephant has sometimes 

 one, sometimes two grinders on each side, or four or eight in all, according 

 to circumstances. The first of these teeth is always composed of fewer 

 laminse than those which replace them. We arc told that elephants thus 

 shed their teeth eight times ; their tusks, however, are changed but once. 

 The elephants of our da3^s are clothed with a rough skin nearly destitute 

 of hair, and are only found in the torrid zone of the eastern continent, where 

 hitherto only two species have been ascertained. The Indian elephant {E. 

 indicus) is represented on pi. Ill, fig. 9. The other species belong to 

 Africa. Fossil remains of elephants have been found throughout the whole 

 continent of Europe, in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Eng- 

 land, Germany, and Russia. But they appear nowhere so abundant as in 

 Siberia, where the tusks have become an active branch of trade. The 

 inhabitants of Siberia explain the presence of those large deposits of tusks 

 and bones by the following fiction : They believe that the soil of their 

 country is excavated by animals of a gigantic stature, which they call 

 mammoiiths or suhterraneous 7noles, imagining that these animals are 

 destined to live constantly in the dark, and that they are killed by the light 

 when they dare to approach the surface of the earth. Similar ideas are 

 spread all over the Asiatic continent, for accumulations of such bones have 

 been discovered near the boundaries of China. Elephants also inha^ 

 bited North America during the tertiary period ; fossil tusks, teeth, and 

 bones have been found from the north to the south. The Elei^has privii- 

 genius^ or Siberian mammoth, is more commonly found near the Arctic 

 polar ice, and buried in it, as if it had lived there at a given period 

 and been suddenly surrounded by snow and ice in which it is pre- 

 served, skin, hair, flesh, and all. We have authentic reports that dogs 

 have been fed upon their flesh. The white bears have probably devoured 

 many of these colossi. Like mastodonts, the elephants were formerly 

 spread all over the surface of our globe. 



Fam. 6. Hyracid^. The genus Hyrax^ or damans, is constituted by the 

 smallest living pachyderms, which are not larger than an ordinary rabbit, 

 and On that account referred by some to Rodentia. Their molars are similar 

 to those of the rhinoceros, and their upper jaw is furnished with two strong 

 incisors, curved downwards; and at a very early age they are provided with 

 two very small canines. There are four toes to the fore feet and three to the 



648 



