Sir Arthur Smith Woodward 277 



cold, it is fairly certain that when herds of these giants 

 roamed the wide plains the climate of Northern Siberia 

 was much milder than at present. Great quantities of 

 mammoth ivory come at times to the London market. 

 Some of the tusks are very large, and, though cracked and 

 discoloured on- the outside, they are still solid and fit to 

 be carved into various useful objects. 



Sir Arthur has travelled thousands of miles in his 

 searches for fossil remains. Four times he went to North 

 America, twice to South America, and he has been to 

 Greece, Spain, and other European countries. One of his 

 happiest hunting-grounds is in the province of Aragon, in 

 Spain, where there is an old lake-bed containing very 

 interesting fossils. 



This part of Spain is never visited by the average 

 tourist, and it is so wild that on the occasion of his first 

 visit Sir Arthur wrote to the British Embassy at Madrid 

 to discover whether it was safe to take Lady Smith Wood- 

 ward with him. Getting no reply, they started out, and 

 reached their destination without trouble. Sir Arthur got 

 the alcalde (mayor) to find him men to do the digging, and 

 they unearthed quantities of bones of the remote ancestors 

 of our present horses and pigs. The Spaniards were con- 

 vinced that these bones must be of enormous value. 

 Otherwise, why should an English senor come from the 

 other side of the world (they think that England is 

 thousands of miles away) in order to dig for them ? It 

 was Sir Arthur's hardest task to convince them that the 

 bones were not worth much gold, but when they did at 

 last understand they settled down and dug nobly, and 

 became most friendly. 



When the work was done Sir Arthur expressed his 

 appreciation by presenting the alcalde with a mayoral 

 chair, and now any other English folk who visit this part 

 of Spain are sure of a warm welcome. When at last Sir 

 Arthur and his wife returned to England they found at 



