130 
MAMMALIA. 
employed it in all those works which are accomplished in other 
parts of the globe by Horses and other beasts of burden. If was 
placed in the first rank in battle, and history informs us of the 
important part the African Elephants fulfilled which Hannibal 
brought with his armies when he invaded Italy, and put to such 
great peril the power of the ancient Homan people. 
In the superficial layers or strata of the soil of Europe, Asia, 
Africa, and America, are often found the tusks, the molar teeth, 
and the bones of Elephants. Scientific men were for a long time 
puzzled as to the source from where these bony remains. Before 
people knew anything of geology, they took these gigantic remains 
for the bones of giants, who, according to certain cosmogonies, lived 
on the earth before the existence of the human race. Thus, the 
Spartans saw the body of Orestes in the bones of an Elephant of 
twelve feet in length, found in Thrace ; a gigantic knee-pan, 
found near Salaminus, was attributed to Ajax; and some bones 
of a very great size, dug up in Sicily, were considered as the 
remains of the giant Polyphemus. Thanks to the progress of 
the science of geology, we know nowadays that these bony 
remains belonged chiefly to a species of Elephant now extinct, the 
Mammoth (. Elephas primigenius). 
Ho land is more fruitful in fossil bones of the Elephant than 
the north of Asia. Such a profusion of these are found in the 
islands of Hew Siberia, which are adjacent to the shores of the Arctic 
Ocean, that the soil is almost entirely formed of them, cemented 
together by sand and ice. The tusks of the Mammoth are so 
abundant in the north of Siberia, that the Czars, wishing to reserve 
to themselves a monopoly of them, forbid the inhabitants to 
collect them. This fossil ivory is a matter which is very greatly 
speculated in at the present day. Each year innumerable cara- 
vans start off to its frozen shores, and bring back from it perfect 
cargoes of ivory, of which the industry of Europe makes the same 
use as it does of the ivory of those animals lately killed. 
There has been a great deal of discussion, and the discussion is 
still going on, as to how we are to explain the presence, in these 
frozen latitudes, of animals which live now only in the scorching 
regions of Africa and of Asia. It has been asked if the creatures 
to which they belonged lived under the equator,, as do their 
