On the Species of Mastodon and Elephant occurring in the fossil State in Great Britain. Part II. Elephant (imperfect)

Abstract

I. I ntroduction . I n the remarks introductory to the preceding part of this essay, I adverted to the importance, for sound reasoning in geology, that every Mammal found in the fossil state should be determined specifically with precision, and I endeavoured to illustrate the point by the entanglement and confusion of the Faunas of the Miocene and Pliocene periods, which had arisen from so many distinct forms of different ages having been ranged by Cuvier and later palæontologists under the common name of Mastodon angustidens . The observation applies with still greater force to the case of Elephas primigenius , to which a scope in space and time, taken together, has been assigned, without a parallel, I believe, within the whole range of the Mammalia, fossil or recent. D'Archiac, in his excellent ‘Histoire des Progrès,’ so late as 1848, gives a brief summary of the localities in which the remains of the “Mammoth ( E. primigenius ) have been said to occur, namely, from the British Isles across the whole of the temperate zone of Europe and of Asia, and along all the coasts and islands of the Icy Sea, as far as the frozen cliffs of the east coast of Behring's Strait; in Escholtz Bay; in Russian America as high as 66° of N. lat.; over most of the United States of North America; in the great valley of the Mississippi; and along the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico”*. Struck with the extent of this vast area, including all the emerged lands between