192 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



by wear, and on an average would weigh about 65 

 lb., while the one less used would weigh 75 lb. 

 " The stride of the elephant is about 8 ft., and his 

 pace at the first rush/^ says Sir Samuel Baker,"^ "is 

 fifteen miles per hour, which drops in the space of 

 two or three hundred yards to ten miles per hour, 

 which rate of progress can be kept up for long dis- 

 tances." 



The Indian and African elephants are the sole 

 survivors of a great variety of elephants, which have 

 formerly existed in immense numbers all over the 

 world, except in Australia. They varied in size 

 from a small animal about the size of a donkey to 

 the stature of the living African species. Of these 

 the best known is the mammoth {Elej^has primi- 

 r/eniits), an elephant of the Indian type, which had 

 a very wide distribution all over Europe, Northern 

 Asia and North America, being abundant in Europe, 

 especially in Russia and Siberia, and it continued to 

 exist, at least in Siberia, almost up to the historic 

 period, where whole herds of them appear to have 

 been engulfed, as by a swamp from which they 

 could not extricate themselves. 



Two specimens in remarkable preservation have 

 been discovered, one at the mouth of the Lena in 

 1806, now in the Imperial Academy of Sciences at 

 St. Petersburg, and another which Avas very carefully 

 dug out by Dr. Hertz in 1902 at Yakutsh. This 

 animal was so perfectly preserved that it was 

 possible to state the cause of its death. A large 

 amount of clotted blood was found in the chest 

 * ' Wild Beasts and their Ways.' 



