America, and probably could not have been 

 carried there from Asia : the impossibility 

 that they could have lived there, owing to the 

 severity of the winters, and where, notwith- 

 standing such a quantity of their bones is 

 found, is a paradox which we leave to your 

 eminent wisdom to solve." This determina- 

 tion M. Buffon gives us in the following 

 terms, although in direct contradiction to 

 those passages in which he labours to prove 

 that the bones found in Siberia and America 

 were, in both instances, belonging to the ele- 

 phant : " Thus every thing leads as to beheve 

 that this ancient species, which must be re- 

 garded as the first and largest of terrestrial 

 animals^ has not existed sirice the earliest times^ 

 and is totally unknown to iis : for an animal, 

 whose species was larger than that of an ele- 



sidering the quantities taken away at various times, the diffi- 

 culty of digging, and the small extent of ground which has 

 been examined, by those whose only object is to colle6t the 

 water for the salt it contains. Stu[:endous and powerful as 

 this animal was, could he have been gregarious r* or may not 

 these be the collected carcases of such as have been bemired 

 in the course of many years ? or may they not have been thus 

 collected by the effect of water ? Not knowing the form of 

 the country, I pretend to form nojudgment, r. p. 



