This limited area of subsistence could necessarily only keep up a small stock of such animals; and, just as we might expect, the remains of British mammoths occur in very small numbers indeed, when compared with those of the great charnel-houses of Siberia, into which their bones had been carried down through countless ages from the largest mass of surface which geological inquiries have yet shown to have been dry land during that epoch.
The remains of the mammoth, says Professor Owen, have been found in all, or almost all, the counties of England. Off the coast of Norfolk they are met with in vast abundance. The fishermen who go to catch turbot between the mouth of the Thames and the Dutch coast constantly get their nets entangled in the tusks of the mammoth. A collection of tusks and other remains, obtained in this way, is to be seen at Ramsgate. In North America, this gigantic extinct elephant must have been very common; and a large portion of the ivory which supplies the markets of Europe is derived from the vast mammoth graveyards of Siberia.
The mammoth ranged at least as far north as 60°. There is no doubt that, at the present day, many specimens of the musk-ox are annually becoming imbedded in the mud and ice of the North-American rivers.
It is curious to observe, that the mammoth teeth which are met with in caves generally belonged to young mammoths, who probably resorted thither for shelter before increasing age and strength emboldened them to wander far afield.
THE RHINOCEROS AND HIPPOPOTAMUS OF ENGLAND.
The mammoth was not the only giant that inhabited England in the Pliocene or Upper Tertiary period. We had also here the Rhinoceros tichorrhinus, or “strongly walled about the nose,” remains of which have been discovered in enormous quantities in the brickfields about London. Pallas describes an entire specimen of this creature, which was found near Yakutsk, the coldest town on the globe. Another rhinoceros, leptorrhinus (fine nose), dwelt with the elephant of Southern Europe. In Siberia has been discovered the Elaimotherium, forming a link between the rhinoceros and the horse.
In the days of the mammoth, we had also in England a Hippopotamus, rather larger than the species which now inhabits the Nile. Of our British hippopotamus some remains were dug up by the workmen in preparing the foundations of the New Junior United Service Club-house, in Regent-street.
THE ELEPHANT AND TORTOISE.
The idea of an Elephant standing on the back of a Tortoise was often laughed at as an absurdity, until Captain Cautley and Dr. Falconer at length discovered in the hills of Asia the remains of a tortoise in a fossil state of such a size that an elephant could easily have performed the above feat.