ANCIENT AND EXTINCT BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. 141 
a canine tooth having been found near Carrickfergus, and in 
Scotland no traces have turned up. 
In size and character the extinct river-horse of North-western 
Europe differed in some degree from the present denizen of the 
Nile, which even in historical times was plentiful in Egypt, where 
teeth of individuals have been discovered in river alluvium as large 
as those of many of the Great Hippopotamus. It may be that the 
former is a degenerate and modified descendant of the latter; and 
whilst we hesitate to associate in idea the naked hide of the Nile 
animal of the present day with our colder climate, enough is known 
of the Hairy Elephant and Rhinoceros, which dwelt here con- 
temporaneously, to warrant the inference that the Hippopotamus 
may also have had a woolly coat. 
Great Britain, or rather the area embraced by the insular group, 
during that epoch which preceded the glacial period—when, as 
has been already remarked, the aspect of the country, so far as its 
plains, rivers, mountains, and valleys were concerned, did not differ 
materially from what obtains at the present day—was tenanted by 
two species of elephants, one of which, the Southern Elephant, 
did not re-appear on the scene after the glacial ice and snow had 
begun to yield to the coming temperate climate. The other 
species, named the Ancient Elephant, returned to its old haunts, 
and the Mammoth Elephant appears now on the scene for the 
first time. At all events, so far as has been ascertained, there are 
no indications of the latter having arrived beforehand, as none of 
its remains have been discovered in deposits anterior to those of 
the glacial period. 
The discovery of an entire Mammoth in the flesh, at the 
commencement of the present century, in frozen soil at the 
mouth of the river Lena, and the subsequent removal of the 
carcase to St. Petersburg, where it now remains, show that, 
like the Hairy Rhinoceros hereafter mentioned, it was an animal 
adapted for a cold climate. 
Tue MammorH at the period under consideration, and up to a 
late geological date, had an almost world-wide distribution. Its 
tusks are found in such quantities along the Siberian shores and 
islands to Behring’s Straits, that a thriving trade in ivory has 
resulted, whilst the fishermen on the coast of Norfolk have dredged 
up many thousand grinders and tusks of the animal. It has left 
