426 INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



When such statements were first made by Cuvier, it was 

 no wonder they were received with incredulity ; and that even 

 when they were admitted, reference should be made to the 

 Elephants introduced by Phyrrus in the Roman wars, and to 

 the stranger quadrupeds from conquered countries, as expla- 

 natory of their occurrence. But their abundance proved that 

 such a cause was insufficient for the effect; and when it was 

 shown that they were equally plentiful in England, where 

 many living Elephants were not likely to have been introduced, 

 and that they had also occurred in Ireland,* where a Roman 

 legion never encamped, there was no alternative but to admit 

 that those huge quadrupeds must have inhabited the countries 

 in which their remains had been discovered. 



Professor Owen, in his work on the fossil mammalia of 

 Britain, gives descriptions and illustrative figures of the remains 

 of the Mammoth,! of a large Hippopotamus, two species of 

 Rhinoceros, and one of a Mastodon, an animal equal in bulk to 

 the Elephant, and, like it, furnished with tusks and a flexible 

 proboscis. These mighty quadrupeds once ranged over tracks 

 which are now occupied by the busy towns, the verdant 

 plains, and 



' ; The stately homes of England." 



Their bones, too, are sometimes found "full fathom five" in 

 the seas that encircle her shores ; and the trawling-net of the 

 fisherman, when it encounters their heavy mass, has been 

 known to break under its burthen. "Such occurrences," as 

 the Professor well remarks, " recall to mind the adventures of 

 the fishermen narrated in the Arabian Nights ; but the fancy 

 of the eastern romancer falls short of the reality of this 

 hauling up, in British seas, of Elephants more stupendous than 

 those of Africa or Ceylon." 



* The occurrence in Ireland of the molar teeth of an Elephant was 

 made known by Neville and Molyneux, in 1715. 



f The entire carcass of a Mammoth was discovered in 1799, among the 

 blocks of ice at the mouth of the river Lena, in Siberia ; and so perfectly 

 had the soft parts of the body been preserved from decay by their icy 

 covering, that the flesh, as it became exposed, was devoured by wolves 

 and bears. It was clothed with a double garment of close fur and coarse 

 hair, some of it sixteen inches in length, and by means of this thick shaggy 

 covering, was specially adapted for living in that climate. The animal 

 was a male, with a long mane on the neck, The skeleton is set up in St. 

 Petersburg. 



