REVOLUTIONS. 91 



When the name Elepliant is pronounced in our hearing, 

 the imagination immediately presents us M'ith the pic- 

 ture of an animal browsing in an equatorial forest, guid- 

 ed by a Lascar, or hunted by a Caffre. We are so im- 

 patient to speculate, that we do not stop to inquire, whe- 

 ther the bones found in a fossil state belong to the hving 

 species, or to a member of the same genvs only, now 

 extinct. Although the lovers of hypothesis have rejected 

 this inquiry as useless, others have submitted to the labour 

 of the investigation. It was ascertained at an early period, 

 by several observers, that many of the large bones dug up 

 from the alluvial soil, in the temperate and cold regions of 

 Europe, Asia, and America, belonged to a species of the 

 genus Elephas ; but it was reserved for Campeu, Hu"N- 

 TEU, and CuviER, to demonstrate, by means of the cha^ 

 racters furnished by the bones of the head and the teeth, 

 that these fossil remains belonged to a species of elephant, 

 different from any of those now living, or kjwzcn to exist 

 on the globe. AVhen the specific difference of the fos- 

 sil species, denominated by the Russians Mammoth, had 

 been determined, it became unsafe to speculate about the 

 climate under which it had subsisted, since each species of 

 a natural genus is influenced in its geographical and phi/- 

 steal distribution, by peculiar laws *. 



Raspe, from an examination of the soil in which the 

 bones were imbedded, and the different countries in which 

 they had been discovered, without the aid of comparative 

 anatomy, arrived at the conclusion, that the elephant, to 

 which these relics belonged, may have been a native of 

 northern countries, in which it had lived, propagajtetl, and 



" The genus Taurus, or Bull, illustrates the truth of this rule, hitherto 

 much neglected, in examining the distribution of petrifactions. The Bos 

 buffalus, or Buffalo, dwells within the tropics ; while the Bos moschatus, or 

 Musk Ox, is found within the Arctic circle, and as far north as latitude 7i". 



