FOSSIL MAMMALIA. 



49 



were found in a bed of gravel, and upon the great stratum of 

 blue argilla which is so considerably extended over England 

 and France. 



In 1815, three large tusks and other elephantine bones were 

 found at Newnham, in Warwickshire, and with them two 

 skulls of the rhinoceros, and several stags' horns. All these 

 fossils were found in gravel, thickly mixed with argilla. 



In 1803, a large skeleton was found near Harwich, supposed 

 to be about thirty feet in length. But the bones broke imme- 

 diately on being touched. 



To be brief, remains of the elephant have been found in 

 great abundance in various parts of this island, but the most 

 remarkable discovery of them was in the cave of Kirkdale, in 

 Yorkshire, with a variety of other fossils, so ably described 

 by Professor Buckland, in his admirable work '* Reliquiae 

 Diluvianae." There have been also fossil remains discovered in 

 Ireland. Scandinavia, a country so little adapted to the sus- 

 tenance of elephants, contains many of their fossil bones. They 

 are found in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, and even in Ice- 

 land, where, according to the report of Torfoeus, a cranium 

 and tooth of prodigious size were dug up. 



Those immense sandy plains which commence to the east 

 of Germany, give name to Poland, and extend along the 

 breadth of the Russian empire, to the Oural mountains and 

 the Caspian sea, are not less rich in elephantine remains. They 

 are found in the basins of the Oder, the Vistula, and the 

 Dniester, and on the banks of the Hypanis. Through the 

 vast empire of Russia these remains are immensely abundant, 

 especially in those very provinces where we should least expect 

 to find them, in the frozen regions of Siberia. They have 

 been found near St. Petersburgh, near Archangel, in the val- 

 ley of the Dwina, near Kostynsk, on the banks of the Tanais, 

 and in the sandy and ferruginous strata by the Wolga. In 

 this last situation, a cranium was unburied, measuring four 

 feet in length. But they are so numerous in all Asiatic Rus- 



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