60 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



the interior. At no period, therefore, could 

 civilized nations have frequented the coast of a 

 large country for any considerable length of time, 

 without gaining some tolerable knowledge of such 

 of the animals which it contained as were re- 

 markable for their size or configuration. 



This reasoning is confirmed by well known 

 facts. Although the ancients never passed the 

 mountains of Imaus, or crossed the Ganges, in 

 Asia ; and, although they never penetrated very 

 far beyond Mount Atlas, in Africa ; yet were 

 they, iti reality, acquainted with all the large a- 

 nimals of these two divisions of the world ; and, 

 if they have not distinguished all the species, it 

 was not because they had not seen them, or heard 

 them spoken of by others, but because the mu- 

 tual resemblances of some of these species caused 

 them to be confounded together. The only im- 

 portant exception which can be opposed to this as- 

 sertion, presents itself in the Tapir of Malacca, 

 recently sent home from India by two young na- 

 turalists, pupils of mine, Messrs Duvaucel and 

 Diard, and which in fact is one of the most inte- 

 resting discoveries with which Natural History 

 has been enriched in these latter times. 



The ancients were perfectly acquainted with 

 the Elephant ; and the history of that quadruped 

 is given more accurately by Aristotle than by 

 Buffon. They were not even ignorant of some of 



