1834.] On the Climate of the Fossil Elephant. 19 



The term has been rather vaguely used ; for the Cape of Good Hope, 

 of which country four of the animals whose bones have been found most 

 abundantly are natives, viz. the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopota- 

 mus, and the hysena, is situated without the tropics, and in a hemisphere 

 much colder than the northern one. 



But, barring this, the assertion has been more seriously called in ques- 

 tion by Mr. Fleming, a Scotch naturalist, who observed, that the circum- 

 stance of certain animals being incapable of bearing a certain climate 

 was no proof that their congeners laboured under a like disability ; and 

 he instanced the rein-deer, which by its habits, its food, and its cli- 

 mate, is totally separated from the genus, in which, according to its 

 conformation, it must be ranked. 



Unless therefore (he continued) you can prove the identity of the fossil 

 with the existing species, you cannot with propriety draw any conclusion, 

 as to the climate the former may have lived in. 



In confirmation of this, we may remark under what disadvantageous 

 circumstances we commonly judge the animals of a tropical climate 

 unable to bear our northern cold. They are mostly individuals who have 

 not even been born in a domestic state, but have been caught wild, caged, 

 and suddenly exposed to a great change of temperature. We see in our 

 own people, and in animals brought with us from Europe, the conse- 

 quences of such a change, equal to, though the reverse of, the other. What 

 numbers are carried off, and how few can preserve a healthy and vigorous 

 condition with every precaution that can be taken; yet man, the horse, 

 and the dog are, with little exception, the hardiest of existing animals, 

 and the most universally diffused over the globe. We have a marked 

 instance of the liability even of certain varieties of the same species to 

 suffer more than others, in the Newfoundland dog, which, I believe, no 

 one has ever succeeded in preserving alive in India. 



The objection of Mr. Fleming was strengthened by the circumstance 

 that the elephant, which was found in Siberia preserved in ice had ac- 

 tually a coat of long hair, such as would have fitted it for living in a 

 severe climate. Mr. LYELLtoo quotes from Bishop Heber the informa- 

 tion that along the lower range of the Himalaya mountains, in the 

 north-eastern border of the Dehli territory, between lat. 29°, and 30° 

 he saw an elephant covered with shaggy hair. I have inquired a great 

 deal, of people used to elephants, respecting this, since my residence in 

 the Dehli territory, but could never find any one who was aware of the 

 existence of such a breed or variety of the animal. One solitary indi- 

 vidual was mentioned to me, as having been seen at Dehli some years 

 ago, with a good deal of long hair upon it, but it was altogether an 

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