272 EXTINCT MONSTERS 



It is amusing to note the devices to which people resorted 

 in order to combat this revolutionary teaching. Thus, when 

 Cuvier first announced the discovery of the fossil remains of 

 the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros in the superficial 

 deposits of continental Europe, he was gravely reminded of 

 the elephants introduced into Italy by Pyrrhus in the Eoman 

 wars, and afterwards in the Koman triumphal procession or the 

 games at the Colosseum. 



It was only by means of minute anatomical differences that he 

 was able to show that the bones and teeth of these elephants 

 must have belonged to a species unlike those now living. But 

 these differences proved too subtle for even scientific men to 

 appreciate, so slight was their knowledge of anatomy compared 

 with his ; so that they were either disallowed or explained away. 



But he was not to be beaten, and appealed to the fact that 

 similar remains occurred in Great Britain, whither neither Kornans 

 nor others could have introduced such animals. These are his 

 words : " If, passing across the German Ocean, we transport 

 ourselves into Britain, which in ancient history by its position 

 could not have received many living elephants besides that one 

 which Caesar brought thither, according to Polycenus ; we shall, 

 nevertheless, find these fossils in as great abundance as on the 

 Continent." 



Another crushing answer to the absurd explanations of Cuvier's 

 countrymen was added by the sagacious Dean Buckland, who 

 pointed out that in England, as on the Continent, the remains 

 of elephants are accompanied by the bones of the rhinoceros and 

 hippopotamus, animals which not even Eoman armies could have 

 subdued or tamed! Owen also adds that the bones of fossil 

 elephants are found in Ireland, where Caesar's army never set foot. 



It was in 1796 that Cuvier announced that the teeth and bones 



