lxxxvi REPORT—1858. 
Sumatra have each their peculiar species; that of the latter being two- 
horned, as all the African Rhinoceroses are. Three or more species of 
two-horned Rhinoceros formerly inhabited Europe—one of them warmly 
clad, for a cold climate; but no fossil remains of the genus have been met 
with save in the Old World of the geographer. One of the earliest forms 
of European Rhinoceros was devoid of the nasal weapon. 
Geology gives a wider range to the Horse and Elephant kinds than was 
cognizant to the student of living species only. The existing Bguéde and 
Elephantide properly belong to the Old World; and the Elephants are 
limited to Asia and Africa, the species of the two continents being quite 
distinct. The horse, as Buffon remarked, carried terror to the eye of the 
indigenous Americans, viewing the animal for the first time, as it proudly 
bore their Spanish conqueror. But a species of Hguus coexisted with the 
Megatherium and Megalonyx in both South and North America, and perished 
apparently with them, before the human period. 
Elephants are dependent chiefly upon trees for food. One species now 
finds conditions of existence in the rich forests of tropical Asia; and a second 
species in those of tropical Africa. Why, we may ask, should not a third be 
living at the expense of the still more luxuriant vegetation watered by the 
Oronooko, the Essequibo, the Amazon, and the La Plata, in tropical 
America? Geology tells us that at least two kinds of Elephant (Mastodon 
Andium and Mast. Humboldtii) formerly did derive their subsistence, along 
with the great Megatherioid beasts, from that abundant source. Nay more; at 
least two other kinds of Elephant (Mastodon ohioticus and Elephas texianus) 
existed in the warm and temperate latitudes of North America. Twice as 
many species of Mastodon and Elephant, distinct from all the others, roamed 
in pliocene times in the same latitudes of Europe. At a later or pleistocene 
period, a huge elephant, clothed with wool and hair, obtained its food from 
hardy trees, such as now grow in the 65th degree of north latitude; and 
abundant remains of this Blephas primigenius (as it has been prematurely 
called, since it was the last of our British elephants) have been found in 
temperate and high northern latitudes in Europe, Asia, and America. This, 
like other Arctic animals, was peculiar in its family for its longitudinal 
range. The Musk Buffalo was its contemporary in England and Europe, 
and still lingers in the northernmost parts of America. 
I have received evidences of Elephantine species from China and Australia, 
proving the proboscidian pachyderms to have been the most cosmopolitan of 
hoofed herbivorous quadrupeds. 
We may infer that the general growth of large forests, and the absence of 
deadly enemies, were the main conditions of the former existence of Ele- 
phantine animals over every part of the globe. We have the most pregnant 
proof of the importance of Palzontology in rectifying and expanding ideas 
deduced from recent Zoology of the geographical limits of particular forms of 
animals, by the results of its application to the proboscidian or Elephantine 
