Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1802).djvu/68

58 they were eſſentially different from thoſe of the elephant: becauſe another anatomiſt, equally celebrated, has declared, on a like examination, that they are preciſely the ſame. Between two ſuch authorities I will ſuppoſe this circumſtance equivocal. But, 1. The ſkeleton of the mammoth (for ſo the incognitum has been called) beſpeaks an animal of five or fix times the cubit volume of the elephant, as Mons. de Buffon has admitted. 2. The grinders are five times as large, are ſquare, and the grinding ſurface ſtudded with four or five rows of blunt points: whereas thoſe of the elephant are broad and thin, and their grinding ſurface flat. 3. I have never heard an inſtance, and ſuppoſe there has been none, of the grinder of an elephant being found in America. 4. From the known temperature and conſtitution of the elephant, he could never have exiſted in thoſe regions where the remains of the mammoth have been found. The elephant is a native only of the torrid zone and its vicinities: if, with the aſſiſtance of warm apartments and warm cloathing, he has been preſerved in life in the temperate climates of Europe, it has only been for a ſmall portion of what would have been his natural period, and no inſtance of his multiplication in them has ever been known. But no bones of the mammoth, as I have before obſerved, have been ever found further ſouth than the ſalines of the Holſton, and they have been found as far north as the Arctic circle. Thoſe, therefore, who are of opinion that the elephant and mammoth are the ſame, muſt believe, 1. That the elephant known to us can exiſt and multiply in the frozen zone; or, 2.