86 



MUSEUM OF ANIMATED NATURE. 



[Elephants. 



abounded in regions where it has long disappeared. 

 Moreover the Carthaginians, who used the African 

 elephant as an engine of war, as Porus and the In- 

 dian kings did the Asiatic, collected, on the threat- 

 ened invasion of Scipio (b.c. 205), a great number 

 of these animals, so quickly as to prove that they 

 had not to penetrate far into the interior to procure 

 them. The Ptolemies, it would seem, procured their 

 elephants in Abyssinia. Herodotus states that this 

 animal abounded, with bears and lions, in Libya. 

 Ethiopia paid a tribute to Darius, which consisted 

 in part of elephants' tusks. Though the Romans 

 were at an early epoch acquainted with ivory, the 

 Etruscan attributes of royalty being sceptres and 

 thrones of this material, still the. first personal ac- 

 quaintance of the Romans with this animal was when 

 Pyrrhus, king of Epiras (b.c. 281), invaded Italy, 

 bringing elephants as part of the military force. 

 These, however, were most probably Indian ; and 

 might indeed have been some of the numbers which 

 were left by Alexander at his death, about half a 

 century previously, and which with his kingdom 

 and treasures were divided between his successors, 

 and employed in the sanguinary wars which arose 

 out of their individual contests for empire. At all 

 events, as India was open, these animals might easily 

 have been procured. Perdiccas led them into 

 Egvpt against Ptolemy, and they were governed by 

 Indian mohouts ; Ptolemy opposed them by Ethio- 

 pian elephants, which were not considered so effec- 

 tive as the Indian animals, perhaps from not being 

 so well trained. The Romans called the elephant 

 the Lucanian ox, as it would seem from having first 

 encountered it in the territory of Lucania ; and this 

 name was generally adopted afterwards. In the 

 Punic war trie Romans had to encounter the African 

 elephant, and Regulas captured eighteen at the bat- 

 tle of Adis. Afterwards at the battle of Panormis 

 (Palermo) upwards of 100 were taken, and the con- 

 sul Metullus transported them to Rome to gratify 

 the wonder of the people, and die in the circus for 

 their amusement. Hannibal employed them in 

 Spain, and, as is well known, in Italy, and when 

 those which he brought with him had all perished, 

 he received large reinforcements from Carthage. 



After the close of the Punic war, the Romans 

 themselves used the African elephant in subduing 

 Macedonia; and thirty years afterwards, Perseus, 

 the last king of Macedon, whose great predecessor 

 had made Europe familiar with the power of the 

 elephant, possessed none in his own army to oppose 

 those brought against him by Quintus Martins 

 Philippus, and, alter four years' ineffectual resist- 

 ance, Macedonia became a Roman province. At the 

 battle of Magnesia, Scipio brought African elephants 

 against An tiochus, who opposed them with elephants 

 from India, and thus in hostile array were brought 

 together the peaceful tenants of the plains and 

 forests of two remote regions of the earth separated 

 by seas and deserts. Julius Csesar employed on 

 various occasions the elephant in his armies, but 

 more perhaps as a beast of burden, and for the sake 

 of ostentation, or of striking terror among barbarous 

 people, than for actual combat. The Romans be- 

 came now well acquainted with this beast, and 

 availed themselves of it for the purpose of drawing 

 splendid chariots in triumphal processions, but sel- 

 dom used it as an arm of war. They, however, 

 forced it into the brutal, demoralizing combats of 

 the amphitheatre, or amused themselves with its un- 

 wieldy performances in theatrical pageants— such 

 as we have seen in our own days. (Fig. 358.) For 

 more than 500 years did Africa contribute elephants 

 to the Roman circus, and incalculable numbers 

 perished during that long period ; thousands were 

 dragged from the forests of Ethiopia to gratify by 

 their torments an ignorant and debased multitude, 

 and thousands were slaughtered in their native 

 regions for the sake of their ivory, of which both 

 African and Indian were in the greatest request. Of 

 this material were fashioned the most imposing sta- 

 tues • the rooms and furniture of the patricians were 

 inlayed with gold and ivory; and it ornamented 

 halls, porticoes, and temples. . 



With respect to the African elephant it was most 

 probably bred by the Romans in a state of domesti- 

 cation. Fig. 367 is a copy of a representation on 

 the walls of Pompeii of a female African e ephant 

 suckling her young one. The picture exhibits a 

 perfect" acquaintance with the mode in which the 

 little elephant receives sustenance from its mother, 

 a fact of which Buffbn and the naturalists ot the 

 last century were ignorant. . 



At length the power of Rome declined, the but- 

 chery of the circus was suspended, and in the time 

 of Justinian (a.d. 527) an elephant was esteemed a 

 rare spectacle at Rome and Constantinople, the 

 intercourse between Europe and Africa, on the tall 

 of the Roman empire, became in a great measure 

 suspended for centuries; a wandering population 

 of Arabs spread over the northern regions of Africa ; 

 and the elephant, no longer hunted for his ivory or 

 captured for the circus, wandered unmolested in his 



native forests : the modes employed by the Cartha- 

 ginians for training the animal were forgotten ; nay, 

 that it had ever been reclaimed to the service of a 

 people whose place had been since occupied by 

 Roman, Vandal, and Arab conquerors, was a circum- 

 stance buried in oblivion, and the African elephant 

 was at last believed to be incapable of the discipline 

 which still subjects the Indian to the use of man. 

 In recent times the demand for ivory has again re- 

 vived, and in south and western Africa the herds 

 of elephants are thinned by the gun of the hunter. 



Hitherto we have confined our observations to 

 the two species of elephant at present existing on 

 our globe ; time was, however, when a species dif- 

 fering from either abounded on the earth, and 

 ranged over a great extent of country, tenanting 

 climates not only within the temperate latitudes, 

 but such as are now exposed to the severities of an 

 Arctic winter, where their tusks are found in great 

 abundance, and collected for the sake of the ivory, 

 which is still available.* More than this, however, 

 the animal, flesh and all, has been found in a state 

 of preservation entombed in ice. Ages had rolled 

 by since the day which saw it inurned in its strange 

 sarcophagus ; nations and tongues and empires had 

 risen and passed away ; the very region it inhabited 

 had undergone an alteration of temperature and 

 productions — yet, while the proudest monuments of 

 human industry were perishing, while nations were 

 falling or rising, had this body remained, as when 

 the life departed, to be displayed in later days as 

 a relic of times beyond the date of human records. 

 We allude to the mammoth found at the mouth of 

 the Lena in Siberia. 



In 1799 a Tungusian, who went along the coast 

 to seek for mammoths' tusks, first perceived the 

 carcass on a vast block of ice, but without being 

 able to make out its true character. In 1801 it 

 became partially exposed ; in 1803 it became dis- 

 engaged by the melting of the ice; and in 1804 

 the Tungusian, named Schumachoff, cut off the 

 tusks and sold them to a merchant, for the value 

 of fifty rubles. Two years afterwards Mr. Adams 

 found the mammoth still on the shore, but greatly 

 mutilated. The Yakutski had fed their dogs with 

 the flesh. Bears, wolves, wolverenes, and foxes 

 had feasted upon it ; but though all the flesh and 

 the proboscis were gone, the skeleton remained 

 with the exception of one fore-leg. The skin 

 was also to a certain extent perfect, and one of 

 the ears was well preserved with its tuft of hairs. 

 The skin, of a dark tint, was covered with reddish 

 wool and black hairs ; but much of the fur was 

 injured by damp, and much trodden into the earth 

 by the bears. The skeleton and other portions of 

 value were carefully collected; the tusks were re- 

 purchased, and the whole transported to St. Peters- 

 burg. 



The skeleton is now in the museum of the Aca- 

 demy, and the skin still remains attached to the 

 head and feet. A part of the skin and some of 

 the hair of this animal were sent by Mr. Adams 

 to Sir Joseph Banks, who presented them to the 

 Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The 

 hair is entirely separated from the skin, except- 

 ing in one very small part where it still remains 

 attached. It consists of two sorts, common hair 

 and bristles, and of each there are several va- 

 rieties, differing in length and thickness. That 

 remaining fixed on the skin is of the colour of the 

 camel, an inch and a half long, very thick-set, and 

 curled in locks. It is interspersed with a few 

 bristles, about three inches long, of a dark reddish 

 colour. Among the separate parcels of hair are 

 some rather redder than the short hair just men- 

 tioned, about four inches long; and some bristles 

 nearly black, much thicker than horsehair, and 

 from 12 to 18 inches long. The skin when first 

 brought to the museum was offensive ; it is now 

 quite dry and hard, and where most compact half 

 an inch thick. Its colour is dull black. Fig. 365. 

 represents this fossil elephant or mammoth {Elephas 

 primigenius). Another and prior instance of the 

 discovery of an ice-preserved elephant is recorded : 

 in this case the carcass was found on the borders of 

 the Alaseia river, which flows into the Icy Ocean 

 beyond the Indigirska ; it had been set free by the 

 stream, and was in an upright position, almost per- 

 fect, and covered with the skin, to which there still 

 adhered in many places hairs and fur, as in the 

 Lena specimen. There are not wanting other in- 

 stances of parts, as the head and feet, with the flesh 

 on, having been found in ice : nor is it only of the 

 elephant that preserved remains exist ; for in 1771 

 the body of a rhinoceros, perfect, or nearly so, pre- 

 served in frozen earth or gravel, was disinterred 

 near the Vilhoui. The head and feet are at St. 

 Petersburg. 



Asiatic Russia and Siberia appear to have been 

 the stronghold of the mammoth; over these vast 

 regions indeed its fossil remains occur in incredible 



* Siberian fossil-ivory forms the principal material on which the 



Russian ivory-turner works. 



numbers. There is in fact no river from the Don to 

 Kamtschatka where, either along the banks or on 

 the beds, these relics, with those of other extinct 

 species, do not abound. It is not, however, only in 

 that extensive tract that the fossil relics of elephants 

 occur. They are common in Italy, France, Ger- 

 many, Bohemia, and the British Isles. They are 

 found also in North America, mixed with those of 

 the mastodon; and have been brought by Baron 

 Humboldt from Mexico and Peru. 



Fig. 366 represents the skull of the Elephas 

 primigenius. In form it approximates the most 

 nearly to that of the Indian elephant, but has seve- 

 ral distinguishing characteristics. The grinders for 

 instance have the ribands of enamel across the worn 

 crown thinner and less festooned at their edge, and 

 in a given space are more numerous, being closer 

 together. The facial line is more perpendicular, 

 and the top of the skull more peaked. The alveoli' 

 of the tusks are far more extensively developed, a 

 circumstance which must have given a pecu- 

 liar character to the physiognomy of the animal 

 very unlike that of the living species. The lower 

 jaw is shorter, and more upright at its symphysis • 

 while the grinder, instead of sweeping upwards as 

 it proceeds, follows a nearly level line. The tusks 

 are generally very large, arched and directed up- 

 wards and outwards with a bold and somewhat 

 spiral turn. 



With respect to the strata in which these fossil 

 relics are found, it may be stated that it is only in 

 alluvial and superficial deposits— those filling the 

 bottoms of valleys, or forming the borders of rivers, 

 the mud of certain caverns— the crag formation and 

 other tertiary fresh-water deposits, that they as a rule 

 occur. In these slightly consolidated strata are 

 also found other fossil relics, some of quadrupeds of 

 existing genera, and some of which there are no 

 living prototypes. 



In some regions where the remains of the mam- 

 moth and rhinoceros abound, as northern Siberia, a 

 decided change in the climate must have taken 

 place since the era of the existence of the animals ; 

 although, as the clothing with which they were 

 invested proves, the climate was moderate, and often 

 cold ; not however as it is now— for, as Mr. Lyell 

 observes, "it would be difficult, if not impossible, 

 for such animals to obtain subsistence during an 

 Arctic winter." Yet on the other hand, " So many 

 skeletons could not have belonged to herds which 

 lived at one time in the district, even if those north- 

 ern countries had once been clothed with vegetation 

 as luxuriant as that of an Indian jungle. But if 

 we suppose the change to have been extremely 

 slow, and to have consisted not so much in a dimi- 

 nution of the mean annual temperature, as in an 

 alteration from what, has been termed an ' insular' to 

 an ' excessive' climate— from one in which the tem- 

 perature of winter and summer were nearly equal- 

 ised, to one wherein the seasons were violently 

 contrasted — we may, perhaps, explain the phenome- 

 non. Siberia and other Arctic regions, after having 

 possessed for ages a more uniform temperature, may, 

 after certain changes in the form of the Arctic land. 

 have become occasionally exposed to extremely 

 severe winters. When these first occurred at dis- 

 tant intervals, the drift snow would fill the valleys, 

 and herds of herbivorous quadrupeds would be sur- 

 prised and buried in a frozen mass, as often happens 

 to cattle and human beings overwhelmed in the 

 Alpine valleys of Switzerland by avalanches. When 

 valleys have become filled with ice, as those of 

 Spitzbergen, the contraction of the mass causes 

 innumerable deep rents, such as are seen in the 

 Mer-de-glace on Mont Blanc. These deep crevices 

 usually become filled with loose snow, but some- 

 times a thin covering is drifted across the mouth of 

 the chasm, capable of sustaining a certain weight. 

 Such treacherous bridges are liable to give way 

 when heavy animals are crossing, which ^are then 

 precipitated at once into the body of a glacier, 

 which slowly descends to the sea, and becomes a 

 floating iceberg. As bears, foxes, and deer now 

 abound in Spitzbergen, we may confidently assume 

 that the embedding of animal remains in the glaciers 

 of that island must be an event of almost annula 

 occurrence. The conversion of drift snow into per- 

 manent glaciers and icebergs, when it happens to 

 become covered over with alluvial matter, trans- 

 ported by torrents and floods, is by no means a rare 

 phenomenon in the Arctic regions. During a series 

 of milder seasons intervening between the severe 

 winters, the mammoths may have recovered theii 

 numbers, and the rhinoceroses may have multiplied 

 again, so that the repetition of such catastrophes 

 may have been indefinite. The increasing cold, 

 and greater frequency of inclement winters, would 

 at last thin their numbers, and their final extirpa- 

 tion would be consummated by the rapid augment- 

 ation of other herbivorous quadrupeds more fitted 

 for the new climate."* 



* Lyelf'a Geol., vol. i. pp. 96-99. 



