44 ACCOUNT OF FOSSIL TEETH AND BONES 
It is in the highest degree curious to observe, that four of the 
genera of animals whose bones are thus widely diffused over the tem¬ 
perate, and even polar regions of the northern hemisphere, should 
at present exist only in tropical climates, and chiefly south of the 
equator ; and that the only country in which the elephant, rhinoceros, 
hippopotamus, and hyaena are now associated is Southern Africa. In 
the immediate neighbourhood of the Cape they all live and die to¬ 
gether, as they formerly did in Britain; whilst the hippopotamus is 
now confined exclusively to Africa, and the elephant, rhinoceros, and 
hyaena are also diffused widely over the continent of Asia. 
To the question which here so naturally presents itself, as to 
what might have been the climate of the northern hemisphere when 
peopled with genera of animals which are now confined to the warmer 
regions of the earth, it is not essential to the point before me to find 
a solution; my object is to establish the fact, that the animals lived 
and died in the regions where their remains are now found, and 
were not drifted thither by the diluvian waters from other latitudes. 
The state of the climate in which these extinct species may have 
surface of the whole earth, which is not excavated and re-modelled, so as to have lost all 
traces of the exact features it bore antecedently to the operations of the deluge. 
It is probable, that inland lakes were much more numerous than they are at present, 
before the excavation of the many gorges by which our modern rivers make their escape; 
and this is consistent with the frequent occurrence of the remains of the hippopotamus 
in the diluvian gravel of England, and of various parts of Europe, particularly in the 
Val d’Arno. It is not unlikely that, in this antediluvian period, England was connected 
with the Continent, and that the excavation of the shallow channel of the straits of 
Dover, and of a considerable portion of that part of the German ocean which lies be¬ 
tween the east coast of England and the mouths of the Elbe and Rhine, may have been 
the effect of diluvial denudation. The average depth of all this tract of water is said to 
be less than thirty fathoms. 
