THE AMERICAN BISON 207 



We hold our own judgment in suspense as to this 

 question. 



Those outlying forms, the hyitix and the elephant, if 

 not actually brought nearer to the existing ungulates by 

 the help of various species now known as extinct, are at 

 least shown .to be but some of many others which in 

 different degrees approximate to the true ungulates from 

 various sides. Only two kinds of elephant now exists, 

 and the Asiatic is found nowhere but in the forests of 

 India, Ceylon, Burmah, Cochin China, the Malay penin- 

 sular, and Sumatra. The African elephant is confined 

 to the south of the Sahara. Anciently it was fully as 

 much domesticated as is the Indian elephant at present, 

 and bore its part in the armies both of Carthage and of 

 Rome ; but now it is only known wild and in menageries. 

 But elephants formei'ly existed in North America, from 

 Alaska to Mexico, as well as in England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland, Europe and Siberia, where the woolly elephant, 

 or inammoth, has been found frozen, like the woolly 

 rhinoceros. Those elephant-like animals, with simple 

 grinding teeth, the mastodons, ranged over both South 

 and North America as well as India and Europe; 

 whereas other elephantine animals, called dinotheria, 

 which had tusks only in the lower jaw, have been found 

 in Europe and Asia, but not in the New World. Among 

 the most wonderful of all fossil animals ever discovered 

 are certain creatures, as big as elephants, described by 

 Prof. Leidy in 1872. They are among those wonders of 

 an ancient and now extinct world of life which America 

 has made known to us. Their bones were found in the 

 Uinta Mountains, whence they have been named Uinta- 

 beasts, or Uintatheria. One of the most curious of their 

 peculiarities was the structure of the head, which bore 



