FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
75 
firmed by the fact of Major Garden having found the tusks in situ. 
Elephant-tusks, six-and-a-balf inches in diameter, are too valuable 
to have been left by man to decay along with the skeleton of a 
domesticated Elephant. In the synoptical table appended to my 
Memoir on the £ Species of Mastodon and Elephant, &c.,’ the 
Khanoos fossil form is ranged between E. Indicus and E. primigenius , 
under the provisional name of E. Armeniacus.* * * § Captain Spratt, 
whose indefatigable labours along the shores of the Mediterranean 
and Black Sea, have been productive of such valuable and varied 
results, ascertained that remains of a fossil Elephant had been dis¬ 
covered on the banks of the Bosphorus ; but the species has not as 
yet been determined. I have entered on such detail on this point to 
direct attention to an imperfectly explored region, which promises to 
yield important results.f 
The northern shores of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof, have 
yielded indications of the remains of fosil Elephants, the specific 
identification of which remains to be determined. Lartet refers to 
molars of E. meridionalis ? as having been dug up in the trenches 
before Sebastopol and Huot mentions the discovery of Elephant 
bones at Sympheropol, which he assigns to E. primigenius , employing 
the term in the loose comprehensive sense in which it used to be 
applied to all fossil Elephants met with over the European area.§ 
The same remark applies to the Mammoth remains mentioned by the 
authors of the ‘ Geology of Russia, 5 as occurring in the stratum of 
‘ clay-drift ’ which rests upon the Miocene steppe-limestone at Tagan¬ 
rog, on the shores of the Sea of Azof.|| It is greatly to be desired 
that the species of Elephant occurring in these cases should be accu¬ 
rately ascertained. The fact, that so eminent a Proboscidian autho¬ 
rity as M. Lartet, has approximatively referred the Sebastopol remains 
to E. meridionalis, coupled with the occurrence of M, Borsoni, either 
* Quart. Joum. Geol. Society, 1857, vol. xiii. p. 319. 
f The 1 Khanoos ’ and Bosphorus fossil Elephants appear to furnish an explana¬ 
tion of the statements of Pausanias, respecting the gigantic bones of Geryon, and 
large horns (Elephant tusks) found near the banks of the Hyllus, in Upper Lydia ; 
and of the colossal bones of the Indian Grontes, together with a gigantic horn, 
brought to light by digging a deep canal, when a Roman Emperor tried to pass a 
fleet to Antioch up the Orontes. For the former case, vide Pausan. Attic. Lib. i. 
cap. xxxv ; and for the latter, idem. Arcad. Lib. viii. cap. xxix. Also Cuvier, 
Oss. Foss. 4to. tom. i. p 152, 3d Edit. 
J Bullet. Societ. Geolog. de France, 3d. Ser. (1859) tom. xvi. p. 500. 
§ Demidoff s ‘ Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale,” &c. tom. ii.pp. 457 and 564. 
|| Op. cit. Vol. i. p. 502. The authors of this great work appear to consider 
the Taganrog deposit in question, which they term ‘ Clay Drift,’ or ‘ Mammoth 
Drift,’ to be identical with the 1 Mammoth Drift’ of Central and Southern Russia, 
and to have been a result of submergence, like that of the Lowlands of Northern 
Siberia, when Mammoth bones were' transported into its estuaries. But it still 
remains to be proved that the Arctic Ocean of the Glacial period ever invaded the 
Aralo-Caspian province of which the Sea of Azof was a part. We have the high 
authority of Woodward for the fact that the Aralo-Caspian basin contains only a 
single species, ( Cardium edule , var. rusticum ) common to it and the White Sea. 
(‘ Manual of Mollusca,’ p. 431). Huot considered the Crimean deposits, yielding 
Elephant remains, to be of fresh water origin. 
