Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/167

Rh a canine tooth having been found near Carrickfergus, and in Scotland no traces have turned up.

In size and character the extinct river-horse of North-western Europe differed in some degree from the present denizen of the Nile, which even in historical times was plentiful in Egypt, where teeth of individuals have been discovered in river alluvium as large as those of many of the Great Hippopotamus. It may be that the former is a degenerate and modified descendant of the latter; and whilst we hesitate to associate in idea the naked hide of the Nile animal of the present day with our colder climate, enough is known of the Hairy Elephant and Rhinoceros, which dwelt here contemporaneously, to warrant the inference that the Hippopotamus may also have had a woolly coat.

Great Britain, or rather the area embraced by the insular group, during that epoch which preceded the glacial period—when, as has been already remarked, the aspect of the country, so far as its plains, rivers, mountains, and valleys were concerned, did not differ materially from what obtains at the present day—was tenanted by two species of elephants, one of which, the Southern Elephant, did not re-appear on the scene after the glacial ice and snow had begun to yield to the coming temperate climate. The other species, named the Ancient Elephant, returned to its old haunts, and the Mammoth Elephant appears now on the scene for the first time. At all events, so far as has been ascertained, there are no indications of the latter having arrived beforehand, as none of its remains have been discovered in deposits anterior to those of the glacial period.

The discovery of an entire Mammoth in the flesh, at the commencement of the present century, in frozen soil at the mouth of the river Lena, and the subsequent removal of the carcase to St. Petersburg, where it now remains, show that, like the Hairy Rhinoceros hereafter mentioned, it was an animal adapted for a cold climate.

at the period under consideration, and up to a late geological date, had an almost world-wide distribution. Its tusks are found in such quantities along the Siberian shores and islands to Behring's Straits, that a thriving trade in ivory has resulted, whilst the fishermen on the coast of Norfolk have dredged up many thousand grinders and tusks of the animal. It has left