ANIMALS. 



487 



m the shape of the grindiiig-teetb ; which, in these newly found, 

 are fashioned like the teeth of a carnivorous animal ; not flat and 

 ribhed transversely on their surface, like those of the modern 

 elephant, but furnished with a double row of high and conic 

 processes, as if intended to masticate, not to grind their food. 

 A third difference is in the thigh-bone, which is of a great dis- 

 proportionable thickness to that of the elephant ; and has also 

 some other anatomical variations. These fossil bones have 

 been also found in Peru and the Brazils ; and when cut and 

 polished by the workers in ivory, appear, in every respect simi- 

 lar. It is the opinion of Dr Hunter that they must have be- 

 longed to a larger animal than the elephant ; and differing from 

 it in being carnivorous. But as yet this formidable creature has 

 evaded our search •, and if, indeed, such an animal exists, it is 

 happy for man that it keeps at a distance ; since what ravage 

 might not be expected from a creature endued with more than 

 the strength of the elephant, and all the rapacity of a tiger !* 



* Fossil elephants have been found in almost every part of the known 

 world, in Europe, Asiii, Africa, and not loss in America ; in the valleys 

 formed by rivers, and on the high iieighboiuMiood of the Andes, of which 

 the specimens sent to Paris by Humboldt, from Villa d'lbarra, are examples ; 

 iu the scorching reg:ious of the torrid zone, and on the icy shores of the frozen 

 ocean. England, France, and Germany, possess amongst other couutrica 

 their shai-e of these relics of a former world, as the fossil bones of Kirkdale. 

 Bondi, and the Hartz, amply testify. 



They are commonly foiuid in the moveable and superficial beds of the earth, 

 and particularly in those alluvial deposits which lill up the bottom of valleys, 

 orwiiich border the courses of rivers; they are rarely covered by rocks, and 

 are most frequently accompanied by other fossil bones of known genera of 

 quadnipeds, and often by marine or fresh water shells. With but very few 

 exceptions they are found in unconnected heaps ; but in those situations in 

 which whole skeletons are found, they appear as it were buried in a kind fif 

 clay, and in some in^tances even the ^kin and flesh are preserved, as in that 

 described by Gabriel Sarytschew, in his vojage along the north-eastern coa-st 

 of Siberia, and that of Mr Adams, discovered near the mouth of the Lena. 



The great depository of elephants' bones, however, appears to be Asiatic 

 Russia, and indeed, so numerous are they that the natives carry on a very 

 e.xteusive trade in the fossil ivory foimd there, and known by the name of 

 Mammontorakost, or mammoth's teeth, \\iuch they suppose belong to an 

 animal A^hich they have named the Mammoth, believing it lives like the 

 mole, burrowing under the earth, but dies as soon as it sees the daylight. 

 This curious notion they seem to have held iu common with the Chinese ; 

 for a writer of theirs on natural history of the sixteenth century 

 named Bim-zoo-gann-nni, has given a detail of the habits of an animal 

 which he calls Tiensc/ut, very cIcm'Iv resembling those ascribed to the 

 mammoth. 



