HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT. 109 



the way side. There 'are some rather ludicrous instances 

 of the bones of such elephants being dug up, after the 

 appearance of the animal at the place had been forgotten, 

 and gravely considered as the bones of antediluvian or 

 other giants of the human race. The countries in which 

 only the two existing species of elephant are found, all 

 have the tropical character ; and as there is no evidence 

 of the animal being naturally out of them, we must con- 

 clude that both are adapted to the forests and marshes of 

 those countries, and to them only. 



There is, however, a third species of elephant, of which 

 there is no living specimen, though the remains of it are 

 abundant. Those remains are found in very great num- 

 bers in the northern parts of Asia, and especially near the 

 shores of the Polar Sea in that quarter of the world ; but 

 they are not found to the northward of the Lake of Aral, 

 so that the central plains of Asia do not appear ever to 

 have been an elephant's countiy ; but if we suppose, as is 

 most probable, that the two races were co-existent at some 

 former period, w T e must suppose that that country, which 

 is in all probability the native one of the horse and the wild 

 ass, formed a sort of natural boundary between the pastures 

 of the southern elephant of Asia and the northern one. 



In Europe the remains of this elephant are not so nume- 

 rous as they are in Asia ; but as is the case there, they are 

 confined to the northern parts ; and we are not aware that 

 any vestige of them has been found to the southward of 

 that parallel which forms their southern limit in Asia, and 

 which answers to nearly about the middle of France. 

 There are some few of those remains in Britain, though 

 they are not so numerous there as in some places of the 

 continent. This elephant was not, like the two which are 

 natives of tropical countries, confined to the eastern conti- 

 nent, for the bones have been met with in America, though 

 not in any place further to the southward than about the 

 parallel of the south of Spain, which, if we take the two 



