306 



MAMMALIA. 



recorded from Italy, Hungary, Roumania, southern Russia, France, the 

 Norwich Crag, the Cromer Forest Bed, and from a fissure in Dorsetshire : 

 one nearly complete skeleton from Durfort (Gard), in the Paris Museum, 

 seems to prove this to be the largest known true elephant with a height of 

 about four metres. E. antiqims, closely related to the existing African 

 elephant, is the common Pleistocene Loxodont of Europe, with dwarf 

 varieties (E. mnaidriensis and E. melitensis] in Malta and Sicily, where 

 remains of adult animals ranging from one to two metres in height are 

 common in certain fissures and caves. Euelephas is represented at the 

 present day by the Indian elephant (E. indicus), and the earliest traces of 

 the sub-genus are met with in the Siwalik Formation. The best-known 

 and most widely distributed extinct species, however, is the mammoth 



efc 



FIG. 176. 



Elephas primigenius ; right upper milk-molars 2 (d. 1) and 3 (d. 2), nat. size. 

 Pleistocene ; Creswell Caves, Derbyshire, a, the anterior root of milk- 

 molar 2 seen through a vacuity in the bone. (After Owen and Metcalfe.) 



(E. primigenius), which is first found in the Cromer Forest Bed, and is 

 discovered in Pleistocene deposits over the greater part of the temperate 

 regions of the northern hemisphere, ranging even within the Arctic circle. 

 In the Old World it is found as far south as Armenia (the so-called 

 E. armeniacus), while in the New World it reaches even Mexico (the 

 so-called E. columbi) ; and it is to be noted that the southern varieties 

 have more coarsely ridged molars than the more northern and typical 

 forms. Mummified carcases of this elephant have been found in the 

 frozen earth of the Siberian tundras, proving that at least the northern 

 race of the species was covered with reddish wool and long black hair ; 

 and it is clear that the animal fed upon the coniferous trees, from 

 fragments of the wood discovered in the crevices of the teeth. It must 



