[Illustration]
Had this been the only creature of the kind found so far from the
countries to which elephants are now exclusively confined, it might have
been believed that some strange accident had brought it to the spot
where it was buried. But it was not long before similar remains were
found in various parts of Europe,--in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and
in Italy. The latter were readily accounted for by the theory that they
must be the remains of the Carthaginian elephants brought over by the
armies of Hannibal, while it was suggested that the others might have
been swept from India by some great flood, and stranded where they were
found. It was Cuvier, entitled by his intimate acquaintance with the
anatomy of living animals to an authoritative opinion in such matters,
who first dared to assert that these remains belonged to no elephant of
our period. He rested this belief upon structural evidence, and insisted
that an Indian elephant, brought upon the waves of a flood to Siberia,
would be an Indian elephant still, while all these remains differed in
structure from any species existing at present.
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