SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTIVE GEOLOGY. 557 



Bones supposed to belong to fossil elephants, 

 were some of the first with regard to which th& 

 conclusion was established. Such remains occur in 

 vast numbers in the soil and gravel of almost every 

 part of the world ; especially in Siberia, where they 

 are called the bones of the mammoth. They had 

 been noticed by the ancients, as we learn from 

 Pliny 24 ; and had been ascribed to human giants, to 

 elephants imported by the Romans, and to many 

 other origins. But in 1796, Cuvier had examined 

 these opinions with a more profound knowledge 

 than his predecessors ; and he thus stated the result 

 of his researches 25 . " With regard to what have 

 been called the fossil remains of elephants, from 

 Tentzelius to Pallas, I believe that I am in a condi- 

 tion to prove, that they belong to animals which 

 were very clearly different in species from our 

 existing elephants, although they resembled them 

 sufficiently to be considered as belonging to the 

 same genera." He had founded this conclusion 

 principally on the structure of the teeth, which he 

 found to differ in the Asiatic and African elephant ; 

 while, in the fossil animal, it was different from 

 both. But he also reasoned in part on the form of 

 the skull, of which the best-known example had 

 been described in the Philosophical Transactions 

 as early as 1737 26 . "As soon," says Cuvier, at a 



34 Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. 18. 

 25 Mem. Inst. Math, et Phys. torn. ii. p. 4. 

 28 Described by Breyne from a specimen found in Siberia by 

 Messerschmidt in 1722. Phil Trans, xl. 446. 



