Fig. A is one of the above grinders. B is a fossil grinder in the possession of the Royal Society. C is the grinder of an elephant between 10 and 11 feet high, the entire skull of which was then in Westminster[61].
It is thus apparent that two fossil elephants are of the same species as those now in existence.
It is not improbable that the Maghery animal was conveyed to Ireland as a present, or for exhibition. “Fiacra, son of Eacha Moymedon, was mortally wounded at the battle of Caonry, which was fought A.D. 380, wherein he was victorious against the army of Momonia, (Munster). On his return to Hy-mac-uais, in Meath, he died of his wounds. His funeral [p355] leacht was erected, and on his tomb was inscribed his name in the Ogham character[62].”
We here find that the native sovereign of the northern part of Ireland resided in Meath, the borders of which county are not many miles from the place where the elephant was found. It was at about the year of the battle of Caonry that Maximus, the emperor in Britain, aspired to be master of the Roman empire. Finding the union of the Scots and Picts prevented his peaceable possession of Britain, which was a great obstacle to the execution of his project, he persuaded the Picts to join their forces to his, on the promise of giving them the lands of the Scots. The Scots were thus overpowered, and were forced to fly to Ireland and the adjacent isles. The Scots, being assisted by the Irish, invaded the north, and were driven back to Ireland by Maximus, at the head of his troops. The emperor threatened to invade Ireland, and punish the Irish; but the dread they had of the presence of a Roman army, induced them to grant Maximus his own terms, which, in order to conciliate all parties, were moderate[63]. Now it is by no means impossible that the British emperor, on this conciliating occasion, sent this very elephant to his Irish majesty. Tacitus observes, that Agricola (three centuries before Maximus) received an expelled petty king of Ireland into his protection; that in manners the natives vary little from the Britons; and that the ports and landings of Ireland are better known, through the frequency of commerce and merchants, than those of Britain[64].
THE MASTODON.
This quadruped is now known not to differ from the elephant, except in the form of the grinders, and has probably been called by the name of elephant by the Romans. Remains of the mastodon have been found mixed with those of the elephant, in Europe, Siberia, and America; and for the following [p356] reasons there is every probability of this animal being in existence.
Captain C. S. Cochrane, in his Journal in Colombia, vol. ii., p. 390, relates that numbers of the carnivorous elephants have been seen feeding on the plains at the foot of a ridge of mountains, at Choco, in New Granada. “Part of the foot of a mastodon, with five nails attached, was found in a cave, with a tooth, by a savage west of the Missouri: it was very fresh, and perfectly resembling that of an elephant: it was obtained of a Mexican, who had purchased it of a native[65].”
“The native Americans describe the elephant as still existing in the northern parts of their country (the Missouri).”—Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, p. 57.
Many bones of the mastodon were found in the county of Wythe, Virginia, with a mass of half-ground branches, roots, and leaves, enclosed in a kind of sack, supposed to be the stomach, in the midst of them; so as to leave no doubt that they were substances which the animal had devoured, and among them were distinguishable the remains of some plants known in Virginia[66]. Teeth of the mastodon have been found in Little Tartary, (for five centuries possessed by the Moguls,) in Siberia, near the Oural mountains, and one at Harwich, in England[67].