15 



would have been too severe for the sensibility 

 of the elephant. They >vould have had, too, 

 but one night and one day in the year ; a cir- 

 cumstance to which we have no reason to sup- 

 pose the nature of the elephant fitted. How- 

 ever, it has been demonstrated, that if a va- 

 riation of the obliquity in the ecliptic takes 

 place at all, it is vibratory, and never exceeds 

 the limits of 9 degrees, which is not sufficient 

 to bring these bones within the tropics. 



" One of these hypotheses, or some other 

 equally arbitrary and inadmissible to cautious 

 philosophy, must be adopted, to support the 

 opinion, that these are the bones of the ele- 

 phant. For my own part, I find it easier to 

 believe that an animal may have existed, re- 

 sembling the elephant in its tusks and general 

 anatomy, while his nature was in other respects 

 extremely different. From the 30" of south 

 latitude to the 30^ of north, are nearly the li- 

 mits which nature has fixed for the existence 

 and multiplication of the elephant known to us. 

 Proceeding thence northwardly to 361**, we 

 enter those assigned to the mammoth. The 

 farther we advance north, the more the vestiges 

 multiply, as far as the earth has been explored 



