THE FOSSIL ELEPHANT, 



CALLED MAMMOTH BY THE RUSSIANS. 



It would be an endless task, and utterly inconsistent with the 

 plan of our present sketch, to indicate all the places on this 

 globe in which the fossil remains of the elephant have been 

 found. They have been discovered, in fact, in every country, 

 and at every epoch of time. We shall, therefore, content our- 

 selves with a brief geographical view of the principal situations 

 where they have been detected. 



We find traces of such discoveries from the time of the an- 

 cients. Theophrastus has mentioned the subject in a work 

 now lost, but his testimony has been preserved by Pliny, in 

 the thirty-sixth book of his Natural History. 



In consequence of the great resemblance of certain bones in 

 the elephant to those of man, some tolerably good anatomists 

 have been so far imposed on, as to take them for human bones. 

 The pretended discoveries of the trunks of giants, so frequently 

 alluded to by the writers of antiquity, and of the middle ages, 

 are probably to be referred to this source. There are, indeed, 

 bones sometimes spoken of, of the most prodigious magnitude, 

 being eight or ten times the dimensions of those of the ele- 

 phant ; these we might be incHned to refer to the cetacea, if 

 the measurements given by those writers were exactly to be 

 relied on. 



It was for some time a prevailing opinion, that the elephants 

 whose osseous remains have been found in certain countries, 

 had been transported thither by man. As long as these dis- 

 coveries were confined to Italy, and other countries much fre- 

 quented by the Macedonians, the Carthaginians, and the Ro- 



