GEOLOGICAL SUCCESSION. V 



todon there is a large gap in the series, no fossil Proboscidea 

 having yet been found in the Oligocene, though no doubt 

 their remains will be discovered somewhere in the freshwater 

 deposits of that age in Egypt. Hitherto no Proboscidean bones 

 and teeth have been met with again till the Lower Miocene,, 

 but in rocks of that period they are found abundantly, not only 

 in Egypt, but in Europe, Asia, and North America. It is there- 

 fore clear that during the long lapse of time after the Eocene, 

 the deep sea above referred to, must to some extent have been 

 replaced by land, over which the early elephants could spread 

 outwards from their home in Africa. The vast changes in the 

 distribution of land arid water that took place in this region, 

 will be apparent when it is understood that rocks crowded with 

 the shells that lived at the bottom of this ancient sea are to-day 

 found thousands of feet above the sea-level in India and else- 

 where. 



From the Lower Miocene period onwards we meet with 

 elephant-like animals in great variety all over the Northern 

 Hemisphere, wherever suitable deposits for the preservation of 

 their remains occur. At the end of the Pliocene period the 

 group also spread into South America, but at the present day 

 it is totally wanting in the whole Western Hemisphere. 



During the later Miocene and Pliocene periods the head- 

 quarters of these animals seem to have been in India, for it is 

 there that we meet with the greatest number and variety of 

 forms, showing all grades of structure between the Miocene 

 types above referred to and elephants almost like those now 

 existing. From the end of the Pliocene to the beginning of 

 the Quaternary Period may be regarded as the time during 

 which the elephants reached their most flourishing condition, 

 both in the number of kinds that existed and in the wide 

 range over which they were spread. After this a gradual 

 decline in the group took place, till, at the present day, it is 

 represented by two species only, the African elephant confined to 

 Tropical Africa, and the Indian elephant found in India, Ceylon, 

 Burma, the Malay Peninsula, and some of the neighbouring 

 islands. But for restrictions placed upon their slaughter 

 even these last remnants of one of the oldest, and in many 



