412 



ELEPHANT. 



nations of the east, or even of the Romans, had ex- 

 tended, then the remains might have been considered 

 as those of elephants which had been marched in the 

 trains of the conquerors, at least until science had 

 established those specific differences between them 

 which are now so well made out. 



But those remains have been found most abundantly 

 in countries which, in all probability, the foot of 

 southern conquest never trod ; while in the range 

 of that conquest, and especially that part of it where 

 elephants were more likely to have accompanied the 

 armies, these remains are unknown. It is not proba- 

 ble that any southern conqueror of early times ever 

 crossed the Carpathian mountains, or the central 

 marshes, or even the southern steppes of European 

 Russia ; and it is equally improbable that any such 

 conqueror ever crossed either the central desert of 

 Asia or the Altaian ridge, so as to penetrate into 

 Siberia ; and yet it has been found that the remains 

 of those elephants are so numerous in many parts of 

 that country, that they form large banks, and almost 

 entire islands, in the lower parts of the great rivers 

 near their confluence with the Polar Ocean. These 

 are so numerous, and the tusks are in a state of such 

 preservation, that they form an article of commerce 

 as ivory. It is true that for a long period the natural 

 history of Siberia was very little known, and the vast 

 number of the remains of the fossil elephant there 

 were known only to the few savage hordes who carry 

 on their hunting during the summer in those dismal 

 wastes ; and it is still more recently that those re- 

 mains have been either found in an entire skeleton 

 with their natural connections, or that men sufficiently 

 skilled in comparative anatomy have joined them 

 bone to bone, in the same relative situations which 

 they must have held during the lives of the animals. 



Previous to this period they had been found in 

 various parts of Europe, indeed partially in all parts 

 of it, from the shores of the Mediterranean to those 

 of the Icy Sea ; on the main land, most frequently in 

 the lower valleys, or near the estuaries of the larger 

 rivers. But they were not confined to the continent, 

 for they were observed in the British Islands, and 

 even in Iceland, distant as that island is from the 

 European shores ; but how they found their way to 

 such remote places is a point which has not been and 

 which probably cannot be determined. 



Before science w.as applied to the rational solution 

 of natural phenomena, those bones gave rise to singu- 

 lar conjectures. Where only a bone or two was met 

 with, these were, generally speaking, considered as 

 human bones, as the remains of some giant race which 

 had peopled the world in times anterior to all memory. 

 This belief accorded well with the superstitions of the 

 northern nations, who are still inclined to ascribe the 

 erection of every ruin of which the history is lost, 

 as well as the production of many of those singular 

 appearances which rocks and the other permanent 

 works of nature exhibit in these wild places, to the 

 labours of the giants ; but when it came so far as the 

 finding of a tusk, of such dimensions as some of those 

 fossil tusks are, it t ended to upset the theory of the 

 giants ; for though many of these had " terrible teeth," 

 according to the generally believed legends, the tusks 

 of an elephant, weighing some sixty or seventy pounds 

 each, were rather too much for a giant even of the 

 first class. 



In this way the bones were, in the course of time, 

 acknowledged to be the bones of elephants ; but as it 



was not supposed, or even thought of, that elephants 

 of a race now lost could ever have inhabited the cold 

 regions in which those bones are most plentifully 

 found, a new belief was taken up ; and they were the 

 bones of the present race of elephants which had 

 been transported thither by some great convulsion of 

 nature. 



Nor was there .any difficulty in finding out a con- 

 vulsion sufficient for the performance of this transfer ; 

 for in those days the fact of a universal deluge was 

 held perfectly sufficient for the solution of every diffi- 

 culty which could not be solved by any other means ; 

 and if any thing, be it what it might, was found in 

 the earth in a way that nobody could account for, 

 then all perplexity was solved by the simple allega- 

 tion that it had been " brought there by the flood." 

 It never occurred to those resolvers of difficulties, 

 that it was incumbent on them to inquire what a flood 

 of water covering the earth could do ; whether it 

 could move large bones from the valley of the Ganges 

 to the regions of the Pole ; and especially whether it 

 could place them in the situations in which they were 

 found. When those things came to be thought of, it 

 was soon discovered that the explanation by a deluge 

 would not satisfy the question. The bones were 

 placed in strata apparently deposited at different 

 times, so that several floods would have been required ; 

 and the different bones of the same animal were found 

 so near each other, that it was impossible not to see 

 that the animal must have been brought entire to 

 those situations in which the bones were found. 



Of the fossil elephant the most perfect specimen, 

 and the one which put us completely in possession of 

 the anatomy of the animal, is that which was cast 

 ashore, frozen up in an icy tomb, upon the north 

 coast of Asia, about the close of the last century. In 

 the year 1799, a Tungusian fisherman observed a 

 strange shapeless mass projecting from an icebank 

 near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia, the 

 nature of which he did not understand, and which 

 was so high in the bank as to be beyond his reach. 

 The next year, he observed the same object, which 

 was then rather more disengaged from amongst the 

 ice, but he was still unable to conceive what it was. 

 Towards the end of the following summer, 1801, he 

 could distinctly see that it was the frozen carcase of 

 an enormous animal, the entire flank of which, and 

 one of its tusks, had become disengaged from the ice. 

 In consequence of the ice beginning to melt earlier, 

 and to a greater degree than usual, in 1803, the fifth 

 year of this discovery, the enormous carcase became 

 entirely disengaged, and fell down from the ice-crag 

 on a sand-bank, forming part of the coast of the Arctic 

 Ocean. In the month of March of that year, the Tun- 

 gusian carried away the two tusks, which he sold for 

 the value of fifty rubles ; and at this time (says Cuvier, 

 whose relation we quote) a drawing was made of the 

 animal, of which I possess a copy. Two years after- 

 wards, or in 1806, Mr. Adams went to examine this 

 animal, which still remained on the sand-bank where 

 it had fallen from the ice ; but its body was then 

 greatly mutilated. The Tungots of the neighbourhood 

 had taken away considerable quantities of its flesh to 

 feed their dogs ; and the wild animals, particularly the 

 white bears, had also feasted on the carcase : yet the 

 skeleton remained quite entire, except that one of the 

 fore legs was gone. The entire spine, the pelvis, one 

 shoulder-blade, and three legs, were still held together 

 by their ligaments, and by some remains of the skin ; 



