130 MAMMALIA. 



employed it in all those works whicli are accomplished in other 

 parts of the globe by Horses and other beasts of burden. It was 

 placed in the first rank in battle, and history informs us of the 

 important part the African Elephants fulfilled which Hannibal 

 brought with his armies when he invaded Italy, and put to such 

 great peril the power of the ancient Roman people. 



In the superficial layers or strata of the soil of Europe, Asia, 

 Africa, and America, are often found the tusks, the molar teeth, 

 and the bones of Elephants. Scientific men were for a long time 

 puzzled as to the source from where these bony remains. Before 

 people kn€w anything of geology, they took these gigantic remains 

 for the bones of giants, who, according -to certain cosmogonies, lived 

 on the earth before the existence of the human race. Thus, the 

 Spartans saw the body of Orestes in the bones of an Elephant of 

 twelve feet in length, found in Thrace ; a gigantic knee-pan, 

 found near Salaminus, was attributed to Ajax ; and some bones 

 of a very great size, dug up in Sicily, were considered as the 

 remains of the giant Polyphemus. Thanks to the progress of 

 the science of geology, we know nowadays that these bony 

 remains belonged chiefly to a species of Elephant now extinct, the 

 Mammoth [Elephm primigeiiius) . 



No land is more fruitful in fossil bones of the Elephant than 

 the north of Asia. Such a profusion of these are foimd in the 

 islands of New Siberia, which are adjacent to the shores of the Arctic 

 Ocean, that the soil is almost entirely formed of them, cemented 

 together by sand and ice. The tusks of the Maionioth are so 

 abundant in the north of Siberia, that the Czars, wishing to reserve 

 to themselves a monojDoly of them, forbid the inhabitants to 

 collect them. This fossil ivorj^ is a matter which is very greatly 

 speculated in at the present day. Each year innumerable cara- 

 vans start ofl^ to its frozen shores, and bring back from it perfect 

 cargoes of ivory, of which the industry of Eiu-ojje makes the same 

 use as it does of the ivory of those animals lately killed. 



There has been a great deal of discussion, and the discussion is 

 still going on, as to how we are to explain the presence, in these 

 frozen latitudes, of animals which live now only in the scorching 

 regions of Africa and of Asia. It has been asked if the creatures 

 to which they belonged lived under the equator, as do their 



