e group with which these remains are found associated, _that_ was
exactly what Mr. Penn would have expected in the circumstances. It was
the result of a tumultuary flood, which had brought together in our
northern region the floating carcasses of the animals of all climates,
to sink in unwonted companionship, when putrefaction had done its work,
into the same deposits. He had, however, unluckily overlooked the fact,
that comparative anatomy is in reality a science; and further, that it
is a science of which men such as Cuvier and Owen know a great deal more
than the men who never studied it, however respectable. It is the
recorded decision of these great anatomists,--a decision which has been
many times tested and confirmed,--that the northern species of elephant,
rhinoceros, tiger, and hyaena, were entirely different from the
intertropical species; that they differed from them very considerably
more than the ass differs from the horse, or the dog from the wolf; and
that, while there is a preponderating amount of evidence to show that
they were natives of the countries in which their remains are now found,
there is not a shadow of evidence to show that they had ever lived, or
_could_ have lived, in an intertropical country. Of the northern
elephant, it is positively known, from the Siberian specimen, that
it was covered, like many other sub-arctic animals, with long
hair, and a thick crisp undergrowth of wool, about three inches in
length,--certainly not an intertropical provision; and so entirely
different was it in form from either of the existing species, African or
Indian, that a child could be taught in a single lesson to distinguish
it by the tusks alone. In fine, the assumption that challenges the
remains of the old Pleistocene carnivora and pachydermata as those of
intertropical species brought northwards by a universal deluge, is about
as well based and sound as if it challenged the bones of foxes
occasionally found in our woods for the remains of dogs of Aleppo or
Askalon brought into Britain by the Crusaders, or as if it pronounced a
dead ass to be one of the cavalry horses of the fatal charge of
Balaklava, transported to England from the Crimea as a relic of the
fight. The hypothesis confounds as a species the Rosinante of Quixote
with the Dapple of Sancho Panza, and frames its argument on the mistake.

That this extinct group of animals inhabited for ages the countries in
which their remains are now embedded