THE MAMMOTH. 195 
abundance. According to Pallas, the great Russian savant, there 
is not in the whole of Asiatic Russia, from the Don to the 
extremity of the Tchutchian promontory, any brook or river on 
the banks of which some bones of elephants and other animals 
foreign to these regions have not been found. The primeval 
elephants (Mammoth, Mastodon, etc.) appear to have formerly 
ranged over the whole northern hemisphere of the globe, from the 
fortieth parallel to the sixtieth, and possibly to near the seventieth 
degree of latitude. 
Just as the North American Indian regards the great bones of 
Professor Marsh’s extinct Eocene mammals that peep out from 
the sides of buttes and cafons, as belonging to his ancestors, 
so we find that in all parts of the world the bones of extinct 
elephants have, on account of their great size (and partly from 
a certain resemblance, in some, to bones of the human skeleton), 
been regarded as testifying to the former existence of giants, 
heroes, and demigods. To the present day the Hindoos consider 
such remains as belonging to the Aa&shas, or Titans,—beings that 
figure largely in their ancient writings. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, 
a pupil of Aristotle, appears to have been the first to record the 
discovery of fossilivory and bones. These were probably obtained 
by the country people from certain deposits in.the neighbourhood, 
and are 1aentioned five hundred years later by Pausanias. Several 
Greek legends and traditions appear to be founded on such 
discoveries. | 
Thus the Greeks mistook the knee-bone of an elephant for 
that of Ajax. In like manner the supposed body of Orestes, 
thirteen feet in length, discovered by the Spartans at Tegea, 
doubtless was the skeleton of some elephant. In the isle of 
Rhodes, in Sicily, and near Palmero, Syracuse, and at many 
other places, similar remains have afforded a basis for stories of 
giants. In fact,so much has been said by old writers on this 
subject, that whole volumes might be filled with such matter. Let 
one or two examples suffice. 
