204 THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE ANIMAL WORLD 



of phyletic branches whose successive mutations 

 show a gradual decrease in the size of the body ? 

 It seems little probable to me, although, at various 

 times, endeavours have been made to invoke facts 

 of this nature. One of the most classical is that 

 of the dwarf Elephants discovered in several islands 

 in the Mediterranean, the Elephas mditensis of 

 Malta, the Elephas mnaidrensis of Sicily, and other 

 similar forms in Cyprus, Sardinia, Greece, and 

 Gibraltar. These dwarf elephants, some of which, 

 are no larger than a pony, are of a recent geological 

 age, going no further back than the beginning of the 

 Quaternary. They are connected with the branch 

 of the gigantic Elephas antiquus, which Pohlig, 

 and with him nearly all palaeontologists, have con- 

 sidered to be insular forms. But recently Miss 

 Bate has given, as regards the dwarfism of the 

 Elephants of the Mediterranean islands, an ex- 

 planation which, to my mind, is more satisfactory. 

 Why suppose, in the first place, that a large island 

 like Sicily was incapable of producing for Elephants, 

 as races degenerated through a long isolation, 

 food enough to maintain their vitality and size ? 

 This reasoning might appear alluring as regards 

 very small islands ; it cannot be so in the case of 

 such spacious ones as Sicily. It seems more rational, 

 on the contrary, to consider the Elephas melitensis 

 and the other rather larger mutations, as the 

 primitive forms of the branch of the Elephas an- 

 tiquus isolated in these islands by geological up- 

 heavals, and having found in this dissociation of 

 their geographical area a special cause of preserva- 

 tion. A similar reasoning might serve to interpret 



