24 On the Climate of the Fossil Elephant. [Jan. 



the elephants of Ethiopia, which were a different breed, it appears, from 

 those of Mauritania. 



If we turn to the map of Europe, in the 2nd vol. of Lyell's Geology, 

 we shall find that a great proportion of it was beneath the sea at a late 

 geological period, a circumstance fully sufficient to account for the small 

 difference of climate, which we have supposed to be necessary for the 

 existence of the elephant. We know enough of the laws which regulate 

 the atmospheric phenomena, to be able to assert this change as one that 

 must necessarily have happened. It is needless, therefore, to investigate 

 the matter further. 



I have not been able to learn the greatest elevation at which the 

 rhinoceros is to be found, but it cannot be much less than that of the 

 elephant. 



There is another question connected with the climate of these extinct 

 animals, and that is the period of their existence. The bones of some of 

 them have lately been found in caverns in the south of France, inter- 

 mixed with those of men, and fragments of a rude kind of pottery. 

 Some have endeavoured to explain away the direct inference from this 

 fact, viz. that the animals were contemporaneous with the human race, 

 but hardly with success. 



We know nothing of Gaul before the conquest of it by Csesar, nor 



have we any account of Germany of an earlier date. What species, 



therefore, may have existed in the wildernesses of these countries, for 



a thousand years, or more, previous, we cannot determine. The fossil 



elk of Ireland, which was once termed " antediluvian," is now believed 



to have existed in the forest of Germany at a comparatively late period. 



Since the time of the ancients, several large animals have become extinct 



in regions which once harboured them. Thus the lion has deserted 



Greece since the time of Aristotle. The elephant has left Northern 



Africa (I mean that part of it to the north of the great desert), and the 



hippopotamus the Nile, since the days of the Caesars. The rhinoceros, 



which a few centuries back was found as far to the west as Attock on 



the Indus, is now confined to the forests east of the Ganges. Can we 



then suppose that in the many centuries previous, during which it was 



co-existent with man, its limits were not greatly circumscribed? Is it 



not rather probable that both it and the elephant (which is now limited 



by the Sutlej) may at no very remote period have been found far west as 



the Caspian, and that from thence as well as from still further limits 



both have gradually retreated, as they are still retreating, before the 



attacks of man, and the clearing of the forests. 



