MAMMOTH. 185 



maintains that we do not j'ct know what its food was ; but although it has not been actually 

 demonstrated, as in the Mastodon, there can be little or no doubt that it was much the same 

 as the food of that animal, only probably consisting of the smaller and more tender twigs of the 

 same trees as it fed on. It would not do, therefore, to suppose that an Elephant might be trans- 

 planted from any one country into another if only the climate suited it. The climate of Africa might 

 suit the Indian Elejjhant, but still it might not be able to thrive in it. The molar teeth are not 

 adapted to its food. It maj' be said that this might be true of the African Elef)hant if transported to 

 India, as its teeth might not have been sufficiently strong to suit the harder food it would have to 

 chew there, but that it would not apply to the Indian Elephant coming to a country where the food 

 was more succiilent than it required, and where of course there would be an excess of power instead of a 

 deficiency. But the maxim that the greater includes the less will not always apply to the adaptations 

 of nature any more than to those of machinery. The veiy thing here supposed has been tried. The 

 Indian species has not, indeed, been transported to and turned loose in Africa, but it has been made 

 to live upon more succulent and softer food than is natural to it. This is to a certain extent done 

 when it is domesticated in India, but most so when in eapti^aty in menageries in this country, 

 where it is fed upon carrots and turnips, corn and hay, instead of upon hard branchlets and silicious 

 grasses. The result is that the grinders fall out of repair. The cement or setting in which the 

 enamel rests is not worn awaj', and instead of being like a coarse rough file, the tooth degenerates 

 into a smooth surface like polished marble. The anterior portion of the tooth is not worn away 

 as it shoidd be ; the next tooth jDresscs forwards at the rate of growth allotted to it, and which 

 corresponds to the normal detrition of the tooth before it, each lamina of which breaks off 

 and falls out as it reaches the front of the jaw, but as that has been unnaturally retarded, the 

 capsule of the back tooth, instead of remaining distinct, becomes miited with the uncalcified 

 back portion of the capsule of the tooth in action, and the two separate molars are fused into 

 one unwieldy mass covered by a continuous shell of cement. Of course disease and its attendant 

 death follow in the train. Speedy extinction, instead of wide extension, wovild be the result of 

 introducing an animal to a new country under such circumstances, whether the teeth were too 

 powerful or not sufficiently so, unless nature had the power contended for, of remedying the defect 

 by altering her machinery ; that is, by developing all the individuals exposed to the new condition 

 into a new species. 



The Mammoth is said to have . lived in two epochs (and to have been the onlj^ one of the 

 family which did so, whence the name proposed for it by Geoffi-ey St. Hilaire, Dicyclotherium — 

 beast of two cycles — /, e. before the glacial epoch and after it ; and notwithstanding that Dr. 

 Falconer thinks this a happy appellation, " one of the bright insjjirations of his (St. Ililaire's) 

 later A'oars," I shall venture to question its fitness. M. Lartet argues that it occupied different 

 countries during the two cj^cles, and that it was an Asiatic animal in Asia before the glacial 

 epoch — a European after. Tertiary (that is, pliocene), in the one — Quaternary in the other. But 

 in the pliocene the glacial epoch had already commenced, and its occuiTence in England, in the 

 forest bed of Norfolk, below the drift shows that it had found its way into England before that 

 land was wrapped in its winding-sheet of ice. The reader, however, •«-ill see that the idea of its 

 entrance into Europe from Asia after the glacial epoch corresponds well with my explanation of the 

 course of action subseqvient to that epoch. 



Dr. Falconer thus sums up what is known of the geographical distribution of the Mam- 

 moth. 



