FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
73 
jugum repertis,’ # which Lartet refers to M. Borsoni] distinctly 
states that the two molars were found in a horizontal stratum of 
indurated sandy and ochreous iron-ore which is worked on the bank 
of the Schebysy, an affluent of the Bjelaya, on the western slope of 
the Urals. The Yergennes and Abbe Chappe molars, figured by Buffon 
in the ‘ Notes Justificatives,’ appended to ‘ Les Epoques de la 
Nature,’ the former procured from ‘ Little Tart ary] and the latter 
reputed to be from Siberia (or the Crimea?), confirm the statement 
of Pallas, both being of M. Borsoni; and Lartet tells us that he had 
identified with certainty, as of E. meridionalis , the fragment of a 
molar lately received by M. Bavergie, from St. Petersburg, adding 
that the specimen is encrusted with the same ferruginous, sandy, 
and ochreous matrix, as described by Pallas. J M. Borsoni is a 
constant Pliocene species; occurring in Italy in the same Sub-apen- 
nine beds which yield E. meridionalis; in Prance below them; and 
according to Pallas, in Bussia, in beds at a lower level than those 
which yield the Mammoth. The evidence, therefore, slight and 
imperfectly defined though it be, gives the forecast of the same order 
of succession upon the slopes of the Urals as in Europe, namely, 
subaerial beds, containing remains of the Pliocene mammals of Italy, 
and above them Mammoth yielding deposits of the age of the Glacial 
period. 
It is now well ascertained that after the Miocene period, great 
alterations in the relation of land to sea took place in the regions 
stretching eastward from the shores of the Black Sea, beyond the 
Caspian and the Lake of Aral. We have also undoubted evidence 
that the true Elephantine Proboscidea, exclusive of numerous species 
of Btegodon and Mastodon , existed in India during the Miocene period. 
The same fossil fauna has been traced from Burma, north along the 
foot of the Himalayahs to the frontier of Afighanistan, and thence 
southward, along the Sooliman range to the promontory bounding 
the estuary of the Indus to the West. But from this point westward 
to the shores of the Black Sea, and from the Hindoo-Koosh to the 
Caucasus, the entire region, including Persia, Arabia, Toorkistan, 
Armenia, and Asia Minor, is almost wholly unexplored, so far as the 
extinct mammalia of the Pliocene and Quaternary periods are con¬ 
cerned. Is it not probable that when this vast tract is better known, 
the fossil Elephants of Europe and Northern Asia may be traced 
back towards their Miocene head-quarters in India? Where the 
ground has been broken, facts of much interest have been yielded. 
During the Crimean war, Colonel J. M. Giels, in passing through the 
province of Erzeroom in Armenia, discovered, close to a village called 
Sharvoon, near Khanoos, some remnants of a fossil Elephant which 
he presented to the British Museum. Major B. Jones Garden, 
E.G.S., being soon after on a tour in Asia Minor, and having 
* ‘Acta Pretropolitana/ 3d Ser., 1777, tom i. p. 213, tab. ix. fig. 4. 
f Bullet. Societ. Geol. de France, 2e Ser. tom xvi. p. 484. " 
Op. cit. pp. 500 and 516. 
