OLD OPINIONS AS TO ELEPHANTS’ BONES IN ENGLAND. 173 
notion that they were gigantic bones of the human species is at once 
refuted by the smallest knowledge of anatomy. The next idea, 
which long prevailed, and was considered satisfactory by the anti¬ 
quaries of the last century, was, that they were the remains of 
elephants imported by the Roman armies. This idea is also refuted; 
1st, by the anatomical fact of their belonging to an extinct species of 
this genus; 2dly, by their being usually accompanied by the bones 
of rhinoceros and hippopotamus, animals which could never have 
been attached to Roman armies; 3dly, by their being found dis¬ 
persed over Siberia and North America, in equal or even greater 
abundance than in those parts of Europe which were subjected to the 
Roman power. The still later and more rational idea, that they 
were drifted northwards by the diluvian waters from tropical regions, 
must be abandoned on the authority of the evidence afforded by the 
den at Kirkdale; and it now remains only to admit, that they must 
have inhabited the countries in which their bones are found. 
It was to be expected that the remains of elephant should be found 
in the diluvial gravel of Yorkshire, from the fact already established, 
that these animals inhabited the neighbourhood of Kirkdale, whilst its 
caverns were occupied by hyasnas; and accordingly, the teeth, tusks, 
and bones of elephants of prodigious size have been found in the dilu¬ 
vium at Robin Hood’s Bay, near Whitby, at Scarborough, Bridlington, 
and several other places along the shore of Holderness. As we proceed 
southwards, we continue to find them abundantly on the coast, and in 
the interior of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. The largest deposit of 
them is at Walton, near Harwich, where they he in a mass of diluvial 
clay between high and low water mark, mixed with great numbers of 
