MAMMALIA. 439 
their remains nearly all over the world. When young, mastodonts are 
provided with two small, short, and straight tusks at the lower jaw, a 
character upon which was founded the genus Tetracaulodon, alluding to 
the presence of four tusks. 
The genus Elephas comprehends the largest of the terrestrial mammals 
now living. They are provided with molar teeth or grinders, the bodies 
of which are composed of a variable number of vertical lamine, bony in 
their structure, but enveloped with enamel and cemented together by a 
third substance called cortical or cement. These grinders succeed each 
other from behind forwards and not vertically, as in most species of 
Mammalia. As fast as one tooth is worn, it is pushed forwards by that 
which comes after it; hence it happens that the elephant has sometimes — 
one, sometimes two grinders on each side, or four or eight in all, according 
to circumstances. The first of these teeth is always composed of fewer 
lamine than those which replace them. We are told that elephants thus 
shed their teeth eight times; their tusks, however, are changed but once. 
The elephants of our days are clothed with a rough skin nearly destitute 
of hair, and are only found in the torrid zone of the eastern continent, where 
hitherto only two species have been ascertained. The Indian elephant (£. 
indicus) is represented on pl. 111, fig. 9. The other species belong to 
Africa. Fossil remains of elephants have been found throughout the whole 
continent of Europe, in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Eng- 
land, Germany, and Russia. But they appear nowhere so abundant as in 
Siberia, where the tusks have become an active branch of trade. The 
inhabitants of Siberia explain the presence of those large deposits of tusks 
and bones by the following fiction: They believe that the soil of their 
country is excavated by animals of a gigantic stature, which they call 
mammouths or subterraneous moles, imagining that these animals are 
destined to live constantly in the dark, and that they are killed by the light 
when they dare to approach the surface of the earth. Similar ideas are 
spread all over the Asiatic continent, for accumulations of such bones have 
been discovered near the boundaries of China. Elephants also inha- 
bited North America during the tertiary period ; fossil tusks, teeth, and_ 
bones have been found from the north to the south. The EKlephas primi-’ 
genius, or Siberian mammoth, is more commonly found near the Arctic 
polar ice, and buried in it, as if it had lived there at a given period 
and been suddenly surrounded by snow and ice in which it is pre- 
served, skin, hair, flesh, and all. We have authentic reports that dogs 
have been fed upon their flesh. The white bears have probably devoured 
many of these colossi. Like mastodonts, the elephants were formerly 
spread all over the surface of our globe. 
Fam. 6. Hyraciwz£. The genus Hyraz, or damans, is constituted by the 
smallest living pachyderms, which are not larger than an ordinary rabbit, 
and on that account referred by some to Rodentia. Their molars are similar 
to those of the rhinoceros, and their upper jaw is furnished with two strong 
incisors, curved downwards; and at a very early age they are provided with 
two very small canines. There are four toes to the fore feet and three to the 
643 
