Another general fact concerning these remains, is, that they are found in all countries whatsoever, but always in the loose or travelled earth, and never in the genuine strata. Since the year 1696, when the attention of the curious was called to this subject, by the skeleton of an elephant dug up in Thuringia, and described by Tentzelius,[212] there is hardly a country in Europe which has not afforded instances of the same kind. Fossil bones, particularly grinders and tusks of elephants, have been found in other places of Germany, in Poland, France, Italy, Britain, Ireland, and even Iceland.[213] Two countries, however, afford them in greater abundance by far than any other part of the known world; namely, the plains of Siberia in the old continent, and the flat grounds on the banks of the Ohio in the new.[214] [Footnote 212: Phil. Trans. vol. xix. p. 757.] [Footnote 213: A grinder of an elephant found in Iceland, is described by _Bartholinus_, Acta Hafniens. vol. i. p. 83.] [Footnote 214: The fossil bones on the Ohio are described in two papers by Mr P. Collinson, Phil. Trans. vol. lvii. p. 464 and 468.] 408. When the bones in Siberia were first discovered, they were supposed to belong to an animal that lived under ground, to which they gave the name of the _mammouth_; and the credit bestowed on this absurd fiction, is a proof of the strong desire which all men feel of reconciling extraordinary appearances with the regular course of nature. Much skill, however, in natural history was not required to discover that many of the bones in question resembled those of the elephant, particularly the grinders and the tusks of that animal. Others resembled the bones of the rhinoceros; and a head of that kind, having the hide preserved upon it, was found in Siberia, and is still in the imperial cabinet at Petersburgh. Pallas has described the fossil bones which he found in the museum at Petersburgh, on his being appointed to the superintendence of it, and enumerates, not only bones that belong, in his opinion, to the elephant and rhinoceros, but others that belong to a kind of buffalo, very different from any now known, and of a size vastly greater.[215] He has also described, in another very curious memoir, the bones of the same kind that he met with in his travels through the north-east parts of Asia. [Footnote 215: Novi Comment Petrop. tom. xiii. (1768,) p. 436, and tom. xvii. p. 576, &c.] The fossil bones found on the banks of the Ohio, resemble in many things those of Siberia; like them they are contained in the soil or alluvial earth, and never in the solid strata; like them too they are no otherwise changed from their natural state, than by being sometimes slightly calcined at the surface; they are also of great size, and in great numbers, being probably the remains of several different species.