The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-04-09
THINK THEY HAVE FOUND HIM.

THINK THEY HAVE FOUND HIM.
 Modern man. especially the scientific man. is never satisfied with what is actually known. He reads in his Bible--if he ever opens that good book --that this earth of ours was formed about six thousand years ago. but does that content him? Not by a million years. 90 he goes to digging and delv- ing among the rocks and the earth deposits and proves that the earth may have been in existence millions of years before Moses. So he sees an animal or reads . description Of him, in the books, and has fair knowledge of what is his sise, form, habits and home, but that is not enough. He wants to know how long that particular breed of animal has existed. when and where It originated. and what kind of beast was the first one, how and in what re- spect it differed, from the present, and why there has been a change. He finds . stray boAe or. tooth, and straishtway goes to work to recon struct the creature as 1t was while living. +"
 And so it goes through all the realms of science and investigation. In this day of circuses and menagertes, most people have seen elephants. We know something of their size, appearance and form. and if we care to read about it, we learn of their home and habits in the wild state but that is not enough for the scientific man. He wants to know the origin of the creature, and what the first one was like. Thus it happens that the American Museum of National History, probably the most thoroughly equipped establishment of the kind in the world, some time ago sent an expedition, headed by Professor Henry Fairchild Asborn, over to Africa to hunt bones, and, as a result, we find this in The New York Herald:
 By far the most interestig specimen in the collection is the skull of the palace mastodon. the oldest of the ele- phant family yet discovered. the very was perfect. It is two feet in length, ten inches high and longer in propor- ton than that of the modern elephant which Is nearly round. This progenitor
 
 million years ago, judged from the DOT tions of the skeletons which have been found, found, was y, only four feet six inehes in length, covered with hard enamel and pointed downward instead of upward. He had twenty-eight teeth. while the
 Discoveries made by the expedition show the origin of this pachyderm was in Africa The race has left its bones on all continents, but in Africa and Asia its descendants still survive.
 Thus it is seen that My Lord, the Elephant" as the Arabs call this mighty pachyderm, has a family tree of his own, and if he cannot point with pride towards 1t he can at least feel assured that he had a beginning among the African jungles some two million years ago. more or less. He can show the other brutes that he had a father. probably mother. and that his uncles and his cousins and his aunts" were of the jungle aristocracy long before Noah went into the naval business.
 As will be seen from the account given above the original elephant was much smaller than the present repre- sentatives of the race, and it is some- what singular that some animals have increased and some diminished in size since the first specimens. Scientists claim that they have found remains of the horses original ancestor, and that he was not much larger than some of the dogs of the present day. On the other hand, 1t is claimed that in remote times there were lions, tigers and bears of much greater size than any now in existence, so it would seem that some were larger and some small CT than at present. It may be that some go up and some go down. and the elephant appears to be one of the kind that has gone up. as we'll as changing in some other respects Be that as 1t may. we wish Professor Os- born and his mates much success in bone-hunting and hope they may find and bring over other new objects of world-interest.