This has been denominated the Mammoth Epoch, when the elephant race literally swarmed over northern Europe, from Italy to the Arctic regions. Great Britain at this era formed part of the continent, or rather of the great series of lakes and marshy swamps which then prevailed. Hence only can geologists account for the identity of fossils scattered over this area. The organisms are all of a type, all of the remarkable orders now confined to warmer climes. And when we find these fossils cast up in every field from the same series of deposits—in Switzerland, on the banks of the Danube, through the plains of Siberia, and northern Russia—in the basins of the Rhine, and the whole of lower Germany—in the Netherlands, over central and northern France, the entire south and east coasts of England—we decipher in all this, not only the organic characters of the same period of time, but the connecting links of one and the same superficial portion of the globe. This is a very remarkable chapter in the history of our island, whether we consider the mineral or animal arrangements that prevailed, and their relations to continental Europe. Here we contemplate the relics of herds of the larger mammals which then ranged over a quarter of the earth’s surface, all now extinct; while, toward the close of the epoch, everything conspires to favor the notion, that our insular position was then, for the first time, established. The type of the period is the Mammoth, or the Elephas Primogenius. There are only two existing species, namely, the Asiatic, which is limited to within 31° north latitude, and the African, whose range extends to the shores of the Pacific, as far south as the Cape of Good Hope. America, through all its forests and boundless wastes, possesses not a single individual of the modern family, while the remains of the extinct race are to be found in every prairie, along the banks of the Missouri, and abundantly in the great salt marshes, whither they had resorted in vast herds in quest of the salt, and been mired, as heavy animals are frequently at the present day. The intertropical plains of the new world, and the polar regions of the old, were equally congenial to their habits. Nay, so adaptive were they in their nature and tastes—these gigantic pachyderms of the middle tertiary period—that in every intermediate country, they have left in their huge skeletons unequivocal traces of their sojourn or migration.