It was in 1796 that Cuvier announced that the teeth and bones of the European fossil elephants were distinct in species from both the African and the Indian elephant, the only two living species (El. africanus and El. indicus). This fundamental fact opened out to him new views about the creation of the world and its inhabitants, and a rapid glance over other fossil bones in his collection showed him the truth and the value of this great idea (namely, the existence of extinct types), to which he consecrated the rest of his life. Thus palæontology may be said to have been founded on the Mammoth. The fossil remains of elephants have, on account of their common occurrence in various parts of the world, attracted a great deal of attention, both from the learned and the unlearned. In the North of Europe they have been found in Ireland, in Germany; in Central Europe, in Poland, Middle and South Russia, Greece, Spain, Italy; also in Africa, and over a large part of Asia. In the New World they have been found abundantly in North America. But in the frozen regions of Siberia its tusks, teeth, and bones are met with in very great abundance. According to Pallas, the great Russian savant, there is not in the whole of Asiatic Russia, from the Don to the extremity of the Tchutchian promontory, any brook or river on the banks of which some bones of elephants and other animals foreign to these regions have not been found. The primæval elephants (Mammoth, Mastodon, etc.) appear to have formerly ranged over the whole northern hemisphere of the globe, from the fortieth parallel to the sixtieth, and possibly to near the seventieth degree of latitude. Just as the North American Indian regards the great bones of Professor Marsh's extinct Eocene mammals that peep out from the sides of buttes and cañons, as belonging to his ancestors, so we find that in all parts of the world the bones of extinct elephants have, on account of their great size (and partly from a certain resemblance, in some, to bones of the human skeleton), been regarded as testifying to the former existence of giants, heroes, and demigods. To the present day the Hindoos consider such remains as belonging to the _Rakshas_, or Titans,--beings that figure largely in their ancient writings. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, a pupil of Aristotle, appears to have been the first to record the discovery of fossil ivory and bones. These were probably obtained by the country people from certain deposits in the neighbourhood, and are mentioned five hundred years later by Pausanias. Several Greek legends and traditions appear to be founded on such discoveries.