ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. 219 



therefore, appealed with peculiar satisfaction to the testi- 

 monies and records of analogous Mammalian fossils in the 

 British Isles, to the origin of which it was obvious that 

 the hypothesis of Roman or other foreign introduction 

 within the historical period could not be made applicable. 



" If," says the founder of palseontological science, "pass- 

 ing across the German Ocean, we transport ourselves into 

 Britain, which, in ancient history, by its position, could 

 not have received many living elephants besides that one 

 which Csesar brought thither according to Polysenus ; * we 

 shall, nevertheless, find there fossils in as great abundance 

 as on the continent." 



Cuvier then cites the account given by Sir Hans Sloane 

 of an elephant's fossil tusk, disinterred in Gray's Inn Lane, 

 out of the gravel twelve feet below the surface. Sir Hans 

 Sloane had obtained also the molars of an elephant from 

 the county of Northampton, which were found in blue 

 clay beneath vegetable mould and loam, from three to 

 six feet below the surface : these specimens were explained 

 by Dr. Ciiper as having belonged to the identical elephant 

 brought over to England by Csesar ; but Cuvier remarks 

 that too many similar fossils had been found in England 

 to render that conjecture admissible. He then proceeds 

 to quote the instances of this kind on record, at the period 

 of the publication of the ' Ossemens Fossiles.' 



Dr. Buckland adds the weighty objection, that the re- 

 mains of these Elephants are usually accompanied in Eng- 

 land, as on the continent, by the bones of the Rhinoceros 

 and Hippopotamus, animals which could never have been 

 attached to Roman armies ; and I may add, that the na- 

 tural historians of Ireland, Neville and Molineux, made 

 known in 1715 the existence of fossil molar teeth of the 



* Lib. viii. c. 23. 5. cited in Ossem. Fossiles, 4to, 1821, torn. i. p. 134. 



