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an Elephant, but with a shorter proboscis and down-curving 

 tusks like pickaxes to dig up succulent roots. On the Hima- 

 layas roamed another vast nondescript, something between 

 a Rhinoceros and an Elephant, with two pairs of vast horns, 

 one somewhat like an Ox, and the other pair vast and 

 branching like the Fallow Deer. A vast land Tortoise too 

 existed, measuring some 30 feet from head to tail, and wan- 

 dered through the primeval forests, beating down roads as 

 broad as our highways as he walked. A vast two-horned 

 Rhinoceros roamed on the plains bordering the Arctic Ocean, 

 and the Mammoth, a sort of hairy elephant, existed in the 

 same cold regions ; nor must we forget the Mastodon, of 

 which vast numbers must have existed, an animal elephantine 

 in appearance, but with a body longer and legs shorter and 

 stouter. Then there was the Megatherium, which Professor 

 Owen so well describes, how it reared its vast bulk on end, 

 aud after digging round the base, would embrace some vast 

 forest tree and wrestle with it till it fell. How strange it is to 

 reflect that here in England, where now London stands, with its 

 miles of houses and countless throng of busy men, amid wild 

 primeval forests roved the vast Dinotherium and Mastodon, 

 while Hippopotami and Rhinoceroses wallowed in the adjacent 

 swamps, and gigantic Oxen and Stags, Reindeer, long-tusked 

 Mammoths, and two or three different species of Horses 

 browsed around. Still more difficult is it to imagine in this 

 now peaceful land, that the Lion and Tiger once held sway 

 among these vast but harmless animals, and that the Machai- 

 rodon, a vast and bloodthirsty animal, larger and fiercer than 

 the Bengal Tiger, with curved and saw-edged teeth, preyed 

 on the peaceful stags and oxen. In this favored isle also 

 existed vast and ferocious Bears and gigantic Hyaenas, whose 

 bones are still found surrounded by the crushed and gnawed 

 bones of their last victims. How wonderful to reflect that all 

 these particulars can be gleaned from what I have heard 

 spoken of, contemptuously, as "a parcel of old dried bones !" 

 and yet a man, like Professor Owen, from a single fossil bone, 

 will give you a wnole history of species, shape, size, and 

 habits of some long extinct animal ; and M. Dupont has 

 written a most interesting book " On the People of the Rein- 

 deer Age" (that is, the period before the Reindeer retreated 

 to his present quarter, in the north of Europe, and while he 



