trawling brought up from the bed of the old meadows over 2000 

 teeth. We would give something to have witnessed that wealth of 

 life (and svch life) which met the eyes of primeval Man, but which 

 now has well-nigh vanished, leaving us, as Mr. Wallace has said, in 

 ** an impoverished world." A few, very few, living travellers have 

 been favoured v^ith such a sight in America, or in Africa, but they 

 never will again ; buffalo, giraffe, zebra, and elephant are rapidly 

 following the old Mammoths. But we must not lingtr on such 

 pictures, or waste our time in regrets ; our business this evening 

 lies with the ancient elephants. 



In order that we may be able to comprehend wl at follows more 

 fully something must be said about the zoological group to which 

 the old Mammoth and the present elephants belong, and about its 

 position relatively to other groups. 



Once included in the order Ungulata, or Hoofed Animals, it has 

 been found necessary with the advance of our knowledge respecting 

 them to detach the trunk-bearing species, and to form them into an 

 independent and somewhat isolated order, viz., Proboscidea, 

 characterized not merely by the possession of a trunk, but also by 

 certain special features of the feet and teeth, which are so different 

 and yet related to those of horses, cattle, and deer. And in this 

 mater of separation, as in so many other instances, we are reminded 

 again of the close interweaving of the threads of that web which 

 connects all Nature together ; of the impossibility of fixing upon 

 any one feature or character by means of which to separate one 

 group from another. We find the same or closely similar features 

 or habits m animals and plants of widely different orders, — a result 

 no doubt of the prevalence and influence at different times and in 

 different places of similar physical surroundings. Just as we find 

 the development of climbing organs in totally different grounps of 

 plants, so there are other animals besides " Proboscideans " possess- 

 ing a proboscis, varying in almost every possible degree. It would be 

 a very easy task to arrange a graduated succession of forms, 

 beginning with the mobile upper lip of the horse, passing oh by the 

 lip-finger of the giraffe aud the rhinoceros, by the incipient trunk 

 of the tapir, and so on to the full-formed organ of our elephants. 

 And yet for very cogent reasons the zoologist cannot place them all 

 together. To the Evolutionist the Proboscidea proper are con- 

 fessedly a puzzle, they seem to have sprung into exist-^ nee almost 

 all at once as it were ; none of them can be regarded as the pro- 

 genitor of the others, nor has any other form yet been discovered 

 likely to have been, " Our present elephant," .-ays one authority,. 

 " is one of the strangest and most enigmatical forms." In the 

 genealogical tree by which an attempt has been made to show the 

 pedigree of the various orders of the Mammalia the elephant branch 

 is a detached branch, not to be followed down to its junction with 



