194 EXTINCT MONSTERS. 



similar remains occurred in Great Britain, whither neither Romans 

 nor others could have introduced such animals. These are his 

 I words : " If, passing 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 Caesar brought thither, according to Polycenus ; we shall, 

 nevertheless, find these fossils in as great abundance as on the 

 Continent." 



Another crushing answer to the absurd explanations of Cuvier's 

 countrymen was added by the sagacious Dean Buckland, who 

 pointed out that in England, as on the Continent, the remains 

 of elephants are accompanied by the bones of the rhinoceros and 

 hippopotamus, animals which not even Roman armies could have 

 subdued or tamed ! Owen also adds that the bones of fossil 

 elephants are found in Ireland, where Caesar's army never set foot. 



It was in 1796 that Cuvier announced that the teeth and bones 

 of the European fossil elephants were distinct in species from 

 both the African and the Indian elephant, the only two living 

 species (El. africanus and El. indicus). This fundamental fact 

 opened out to him new views about the creation of the world 

 and its inhabitants, and a rapid glance over other fossil bones in 

 his collection showed him the truth and the value of this great 

 idea (namely, the existence of extinct types), to which he con- 

 secrated the rest of his life. Thus palaeontology may be said to 

 have been founded on the Mammoth. 



The fossil remains of elephants have, on account of their 

 common occurrence in various parts of the world, attracted 

 a great deal of attention, both from the learned and the 

 unlearned. In the North of Europe they have been found in 

 Ireland, in Germany ; in Central Europe, in Poland, Middle and 

 South Russia, Greece, Spain, Italy ; also in Africa, and over a 

 large part of Asia. In the New World they have been found 

 abundantly in North America. But in the frozen regions of 

 Siberia its tusks, teeth, and bones are met with in very great 



