OF LIVING ELEPHANTS. 223 



India. We also saw that, according to Cosmas, an illustrious traveller 

 and merchant, it was the same elephants of Ethiopia that the Ethio- 

 pians of his time no longer knew how to equip, which had the largest 

 tusks, and which supplied most ivory to commerce. These two indi- 

 cations "seem to show that the elephants of the eastern coast are the same 

 as those of the opposite coast. 



Ludolph, however, in his History of Ahyssinia, states expressly that 

 the females there have no tusks : " Solis maribus competunt ; femince, 

 ut cervce, Hits carent* ; and this assertion seems to indicate the Indian 

 species ; but it will be found perhaps that a man who spoke only on 

 the faith of an ignorant Abyssinian monk, all whose figures are bor- 

 rowed from other authors, and who goes so far even as to give to 

 Abyssinia an animal evidently of America, (the ouistiti,) merits little 

 faith. 



However, his testimony is confirmed by Bruce, at least for one par- 

 ticular case ; for, in the account of a hunt with elephants, at which he 

 was presentf, he says that the tusks of a female were very small, 

 whilst the male had them very large. 



With respect to the Carthaginians, we do not see, by any positive 

 passage, whence their elephants of war came ; but what Appian men- 

 tions (Bell. Pun., p. m. 5) of the charge they gave to Asdrubal to 

 take some, the thirteenth year of the second Punic war, 205 years 

 B. C, when they learned that Scipio intended to make a descent in 

 Africa ; and the rapidity with which it appears that Asdrubal executed 

 his commission, prove clearly that they had not to go far to look for 

 them, and particularly that they did not go so far as Ethiopia. 



Indeed, Barbary appears no longer to produce elephants at the pre- 

 sent day ; but it had them at the time of the ancients. Pliny places 

 some in LibyaJ, beyond the Syrtes, and in Mauritania ; ^Elian, in 

 the forests and pasturages of Atlas§. The Carthaginians, then, must 

 have had facilities for procuring elephants, not possessed at this day 

 by the people of Barbary. 



At present, it is only towards Senegal that we begin to meet any. 



SECTION II. 



ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF THR ELEPHANT, OR MAMMOTH OF THE 



RUSSIANS. 



Article I. 



Geographical Expose of the principal Places where Fossil Bones of the 



Elephant have been discovered. 

 To attempt to specify in detail all the places where fossil bones of the 

 elephant have been discovered, would be an endless task : it will be 



* Hist. Eth. lib. i. c. x. f Travels to the Sources of the Nile. 



\ Plin. lib. viii. cap. xi. § jElian., lib. vii. cap. ii. 



