272 
EXTINCT MONSTERS 
It is amusing to note the devices to which people resorted 
in order to combat this revolutionary teaching. Thus, when 
Cuvier first announced the discovery of the fossil remains of 
the elephant, hippopotamus, and rhinoceros in the superficial 
deposits of continental Europe, he was gravely reminded of 
the elephants introduced into Italy by Pyrrhus in the Roman 
wars, and afterwards in the Roman triumphal procession or the 
games at the Colosseum. 
It was only by means of minute anatomical differences that he 
was able to show that the bones and teeth of these elephants 
must have belonged to a species unlike those now living. But 
these differences proved too subtle for even scientific men to 
appreciate, so slight was their knowledge of anatomy compared 
with his ; so that they were either disallowed or explained away. 
But he was not to be beaten, and appealed to the fact that 
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 
