type of the Ungulates, has a clearer line
of developments. A chance discovery of fossils in the Fayum district in
Egypt led Dr. C. W. Andrews to make a special exploration, and on the
remains which he found he has constructed a remarkable story of the
evolution of the elephant. [*] It is clear that the elephant was developed
in Africa, and a sufficiently complete series of remains has been found
to give a good idea of the origin of its most distinctive features.
In the Eocene period there lived in the Egyptian region an animal,
something like the tapir in size and appearance, which had its second
incisors developed into small tusks and--to judge from the nasal opening
in the skull--a somewhat prolonged snout. This animal (Moeritherium)
only differed from the ordinary primitive Ungulate in these incipient
elephantine features. In the later Eocene a larger and more advanced
animal, the Palaeomastodon, makes its appearance. Its tusks are larger
(five or six inches long), its molars more elephantine, the air-cells
at the back of the head more developed. It would look like a small
elephant, except that it had a long snout, instead of a flexible trunk,
and a projecting lower jaw on which the snout rested.

*See this short account, "Guide to the Elephants in the
British Museum," 1908.

Up to the beginning of the Miocene, Africa was, as we saw, cut off from
Europe and Asia by the sea which stretched from Spain to India. Then the
land rose, and the elephant passed by the new tracts into the north. Its
next representative, Tetrabelodon, is found in Asia and Europe, as
well as North Africa. The frame is as large as that of a medium-sized
elephant, and the increase of the air-cells at the back of the skull
shows that an increased weight has to be sustained by the muscles of the
neck. The nostrils are shifted further back. The tusks are from twenty
to thirty inches long, and round, and only differ from those of the
elephant in curving slightly downward, The chin projects as far as the
tusks. The neck is shorter and thicker, and, as the animal increases in
height, we can understand that the long snout--possibly prehensile at
its lower end--is necessary for the animal to reach the ground. But
the snout still lies on the projecting lower jaw, and is not a trunk.
Passing over the many collateral branches, which diverge in various
directions, we next kind that the chin is shortening (in Tetrabelodon
longirostris), and, throu