78 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



civilized nations frequent the coasts of large coun- 

 tries for any length of time, without gaining some 

 tolerable knowledge of all the animals they contain- 

 ed, or at least of such as were any way remarkable 

 for their size or configuration. This reasoning is sup- 

 ported by well known facts. Thus, although the 

 ancients seem never to have passed the mountains 

 of Imaus, or to have crossed the Ganges towards 

 the east of Asia, and never penetrated far to the 

 south of Mount Atlas in Africa, yet they were ac- 

 quainted with all the larger animals of these two 

 grand divisions of the world ; and if they have not 

 distinguished all their species, it was because the 

 similarities of some of these occasioned them to be 

 confounded together, and not because they had 

 not seen them, or heard them talked of by others. 



The ancients were perfectly acquainted with 

 the elephant, and the history of that quadruped is 

 given more exactly by Aristotle than by Buflfon. 

 They were not ignorant even of the differences 

 which distinguish the elephants of Africa from 

 those of Asia.* 



They knew the two-horned rhinoceros, which 

 Domitian exhibited in his shows at Rome, and had 

 stamped on his medals, and of which Pausanias 

 has left a very good description. Even the one- 



* See this more particularly noticed in the history of the elephant, 

 in the second volume of my Researches into the Extraneous or Fossil 

 Remains of Quadrupeds. 



