DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERS OP ANIMALS. 



209 



and specimens of whose skeletons have been brought to our own country, 

 and exhibited under the name of mammoth, which, however, is an 

 error ; as mammoth is a Russian term, applied to a fossil species of genu- 

 ine elephant, which we shall notice presently. But the mastodon has in 

 America been confounded with the mammoth. Both have been dug up 

 in the alluvial soil of Siberia. Of the other species, two have been dis- 

 covered by M. Humboldt in America alone ; 9ne both in America and at 

 Simorre in Europe ; and one both in Saxony and Montabusard. They 

 are all of less magnitude than the great mastodon ; and, from the cha- 

 racter of the teeth, there is no doubt that all the species were grazing 

 animals. 



The fossil elephant, to which I have just referred, the proper mammoth 

 of natural history, makes a nearer approach to the Asiatic than to the 

 African living specie^ ;^'^ut it, nevertheless, differs so much from both, as 

 to leave no question of its being an entirely extinct animal. Various relics 

 of it, as bones and teeth, have been found scattered over almost every part 

 of Europe, as well as in Asia and both Americas ; occasionally in our 

 own island, in the isle of Sheppey, and in Ireland. But they are more 

 common, and in a far more perfect state, in Sweden, Norway, Poland, 

 and especially in Asiatic Russia ; and M. Cuvier inclines to a belief that 

 the bones of archbishop Pontoppidan's giants of the north are nothing 

 more than remains of this animal. The most perfect specimen of this 

 kind that has ever been met with, was discovered in the year 1799, by a 

 Tungusian fisherman. It appeared at this time like a shapeless mass, 

 projecting from an ice-bank near the mouth of a river in the north of Sibe- 

 ria. Year after year a larger and a larger portion of the animal was ren- 

 dered visible by the melting of the ice in which it was imbedded : but it 

 was not till five years after the first detection that its enormous carcase 

 became entirely disengaged, and fell down from an ice-crag upon a sand- 

 bank, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The greater part of its iBesh 

 was soon afterwards devoured by the white bear, or cut away by the 

 Juhuts of the neighbourhood, as food for their dogs ; yet when, in 1806, 

 Mr. Adams examined it on the spot, and carefully collected all its re- 

 maining parts, more than thirty pounds weight of its hair and bristles 

 were gathered from the wet sand-bank into which they had been trampled ; 

 and the mass of extremely thick and heavy skin, which was still left, de- 

 manded the utmost exertions of ten men for its removal. 



The other extinct animals of the same class and order, collected or de- 

 scribed by M. Cuvier, are a fossil rhinoceros, sufficiently distinguished 

 from the only two species at present known ; two unknown species of 

 the hippopotamus ; and two of the tapir. 



Of the fossil rhinoceros, the earliest specimens noticed were those de- 

 scribed by Grew, and consist of bones dug out of alluvial soil near Can- 

 terbury. Since which period, other rehcs have been traced in various 

 parts of Germany, France, and Italy ; while, in Siberia, an entire animal 

 has been discovered, with its flesh and skin little injured. Of the two de- 

 veloped species of fossil hippopotamus, there is a doubt whether the 

 largest, found in the alluvial soil of France and Italy, may not belong to 

 an extant species ; but the other, which is not larger than a hog, is strongly 

 characterized, and widely different from either of the two living species of 

 the present day. The two discovered species of fossil tapir evince a like 

 difference of size, the one being small, the other gigantic : while both are 

 found in different parts of France, Germany, and Italy, 



or " 



