178 

 CHAPTER I. 



ON THE BONES OF ELEPHANTS. 



The fossil bones of elephants are those which first awakened, and 

 most generally engaged the attention of observers, and even of the 

 public. Their enormous size caused them to be remarked and col- 

 lected every where : their very great abundance in all climates, even 

 in those where the species could not subsist at present, has struck 

 men with astonishment, and given rise to an infinity of hypotheses to 

 account for it ; but men have expended much less of care in determining 

 the conditions and nature of the problem, than they have of labour and 

 assiduity in attempting to solve it; and probably this negligence in 

 establishing with precision the basis and even the terms of the question, 

 has been one of the causes which have rendered most of its solutions so 

 unsuccessful. 



What I mean to say is, that not till a very late period was attention 

 directed to several partial questions, which a person should have been 

 able to answer before he essayed his strength on this grand problem. 



Are the elephants now amongst us all of the same species ? Sup- 

 posing that there may be several species of them, are the fossil ele- 

 phants of the different countries indistinctly of one or other ? or else, 

 are they also distributed in different countries according to their 

 species ? or might they not be of species altogether different and now 

 lost, &c. ? 



It is evident that we can say nothing demonstrable on the problem, 

 until we have solved these preliminary questions ; and still antecedently 

 to us, men scarcely had the elements necessary to the solution of 

 some. 



The osteologies of elephants previously published weie so deficient 

 in detail, that even to this day one could not say of several, whether 

 they belong to one or other of our living species ; and considering this 

 immense quantity of fossil bones, of which so many writers have spoken, 

 we had scarcely obtained tolerable figures of two or tliree. Dauben- 

 ton, who had but one skeleton of an African elephant before his eyes, 

 perceived not the enormous differences between its molars and the 

 fossil molars, and he confounded a fossil femur of the animal from 

 Ohio with that of the elephant. The comparisons made by Tenzel, by 

 Pallas, and so many others, of fossil bones with fresh bones, were 

 never expressed but in general terms, and were accompanied neither 

 by those exact figures, nor those rigorous measures, nor those copious 

 details, which researches of such importance necessarily called for. 



I could not even dispense with giving a new plate of the entire 

 skeleton of the Elephant of India. 



In fact, the figure published by Allen Monlin*, copied in the Ele- 

 phantoyraphie of Hartenfels, in the Amp hi the at rum Zootomicum of Va- 



* Anatomical Account of the Elephant accidentally burnt in Dublin, &c., Loud., 

 1682, pp. 72, in 4to. cum. 2 tab. 



