FOSSIL SKELETONS AND JAW-BONES 149 



classifies animals and tries to exhibit their degrees of 

 likeness and relationship to one another by the names he 

 adopts for them. The mammoth is a distinct " species " 

 of elephant. It requires, it is true, a " specific " or " second " 

 name of its own ; but it belongs to the genus elephant. 

 Hence we call it Elephas primigenius ; whilst the living 

 Indian elephant is Elephas Indicus. The reader is referred 

 to the preceding chapter for further notes about elephants. 



The strata next below the Pleistocene gravels and cave 

 deposits are ascribed to the " Pliocene age " older than 

 these are the " Miocene " and the " Eocene," and then you 

 come to the Chalk, a good white landmark separating 

 newer from older strata. 



We know now in great detail the skeletons and jaws of 

 some hundreds of kinds of extinct animals of very 

 different groups found in the Eocene, the Miocene, the 

 Pliocene, and the Pleistocene layers of clays, sands, and 

 gravels of this part of the world. Nothing very strange 

 or unlike what is now living is found in the Pleistocene 

 the latest deposits but when we go further back strange 

 creatures are discovered, becoming stranger and less like 

 living things as we pass through Pliocene to Miocene, 

 and on downwards in layers, backwards in time to the 

 Eocene. 



Though the past history of the Mediterranean sea shows 

 that it was formerly not so extensive as it is now, and 

 that there were junctions between Europe and Africa 

 across its waters, yet the deeper parts of that sea are 

 very ancient, and some of the islands have long been 

 isolated. In Malta the remains of extraordinary species 

 of minute elephants have been found, one no larger than 

 a small donkey, and in the island of Cyprus an English 

 lady, Miss Dorothea Bate, has discovered the bones of a 

 pigmy hippopotamus (like that still living in Liberia) 

 no larger than a sheep. Miss Bate some three years 



