224 THE CHAIN OF LIFE. 



which are more elevated than the Whales, and very different in 

 type, appear much later, and without any probable ancestry. 

 The Elephants, two or three species of which constitute in 

 the modern world the sole representatives of an order, are a 

 remnant of an ancient race once vastly more numerous. They 

 appear in Europe and Asia in the Miocene, when they were 

 represented by three distinct genera (Elephas, Mastodotiy and 

 Dinotheriiini). The second genus (Fig. i8i) differs from the 

 proper Elephants in having tuberculated teeth, indicating a 

 more swinish habit, and probably a more fierce disposition. 

 The third (Fig. 182) is remarkable for the immense size of some 

 of its species, far exceeding the modern Elephants, and has the 

 farther peculiarity of a pair of descending tusks on the lower 

 jaw, constituting a strong and heavy grubbing-hoe, with which 

 it could probably dig deeply for roots. So important was the 

 group in Miocene times that seven elephants are already known 

 from this formation in India alone, besides three species of 

 Mastodon. Four or five Miocene Mastodons are known in 

 Europe, besides two DinotherLi ; and the true Elephants appear 

 there in the Pliocene, and continue to the beginning of the 

 Modern. The elephantine animals are not known in America 

 till the Pliocene, but in that and the Pleistocene, and perhaps 

 up to the human period, the western continent, now altogether 

 destitute of elephants, possessed several species both oi Elephas 

 and Mastodon^ which extended, as in Siberia, even into the 

 krctic regions ; and, as we know from specimens preserved in 

 a frozen state in the latter region, some of the species were so 

 protected by dense fur as to be able to endure extreme cold. 

 The candid Gaudry closes his summary of the history and 

 affinities of the elephantine aiiimals with the words : '• How- 

 ever, the Lum of the differences compared with that of the 

 reseiiiblmres is too great to permit us to indicate any relation 

 of dencent between the proboscidians and the animals of other 

 orders known to us at present," So these greatest of all the 

 animals of the land, with their strangely specialised forms and 



