194 
EXTINCT MONSTERS. 
similar remains occurred in Great Britain, whither neither Romans 
nor others could have introduced such animals. These are his 
words: “If, passing across the German Ocean, we transport 
ourselves into Britain, which in ancient history by its position 
could not have received many living elephants besides that one 
which Caesar brought thither, according to Polycenus ; we shall, 
nevertheless, find these fossils in as great abundance as on the 
Continent.” 
Another crushing answer to the absurd explanations of Cuvier’s 
countrymen was added by the sagacious Dean Buckland, who 
pointed out that in England, as on the Continent, the remains 
of elephants are accompanied by the bones of the rhinoceros and 
hippopotamus, animals which not even Roman armies could have 
subdued or tamed ! Owen also adds that the bones of fossil 
elephants are found in Ireland, where Caesar’s army never set foot. 
It was in 1796 that Cuvier announced that the teeth and bones 
of the European fossil elephants were distinct in species from 
both the African and the Indian elephant, the only two living 
species (El. africanus and EL indicus). This fundamental fact 
opened out to him new views about the creation of the world 
and its inhabitants, and a rapid glance over other fossil bones in 
his collection showed him the truth and the value of this great 
idea (namely, the existence of extinct types), to which he con- 
secrated the rest of his life. Thus palaeontology may be said to 
have been founded on the Mammoth. 
The fossil remains of elephants have, on account of their 
common occurrence in various parts of the world, attracted 
a great deal of attention, both from the learned and the 
unlearned. In the North of Europe they have been found in 
Ireland, in Germany ; in Central Europe, in Poland, Middle and 
South Russia, Greece, Spain, Italy ; also in Africa, and over a 
large part of Asia. In the New World they have been found 
abundantly in North America. But in the frozen regions of 
Siberia its tusks, teeth, and bones are met with in very great 
