Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 311 
part of it alone. We know, also, that he imagined as the 
cause of their extinction in that continent, theimpossibility, 
from the place where they lived, of their passing the isthmus 
of Panama when the gradual increase of cold weather forced 
them towards the south, as if the whole of Mexico was not 
stili warm enough for them to live in. 
To conclude ; the facts upon which Buffon rested his hy- 
pothesis are not entirely accurate. The bones which were 
discovered in America in his time were not those of the ele- 
phant ; they belonged to another animal which we have now 
distinguished by the name of mastedonta, and which is also 
known by the name of the animal of the Ohio. ‘ 
But there are certainly proofs of the existence of real ele- 
phants’ bones in America at this.moment: several recent 
authors testify this. Mr. Rembrandt Peale, in his Historical 
Disquisition on the Mammoth, says that jaw-bones have 
been found in Kentucky completely similar to those of Si- 
beria, but in small number, in a state of decomposition, 
and unaccompanied with other bones; whence he coneludes 
that the extirpation of the elephant in this continent was 
long previous to that of the mastodonta or animal of the 
Ohio, or that its carcase was brought there by some cata- 
strophe. 
I find a true elephant’s jaw, very well represented, in a 
plate of the work of J. Drayton upon Carolina. 
Catesby speaks of some real fossil elephant teeth in this 
country. ‘ In a part of Carolina called Stono were dug up 
three or four teeth of a large animal, which all the negroes, 
who were natives of Africa, declared to be elephants’ grind- 
ers; and I thought so myself also, having seen some similar 
ones which bad been brought from Africa *,” 
Mr. Barton, who pointed out this passage to me, remarks, 
with truth, that it ought uot to be inferred that these teeth 
were precisely similar to those from Africa, but merely ele- 
phants’ teeth in general : I should here say, teeth composed of 
lamine. In fact, we cannot suppose that Catesby and his 
* Catesby’s History of Carolina, vol. ii App. p.7. 
U4 negroes 
