ELEPHANTS, RHINOCEROSES, AND HORSES 265 



The southern range of the mammoth in Europe appears to 

 have been a line more or less coincident with the 40th parallel 

 of North latitude. (Its remains have not hitherto been found 

 in either Scandinavia or Finland.) It did not, therefore, so far 

 as we know, reach the Mediterranean Basin. It became em- 

 phatically the one, perhaps the solitary, attempt of the elephants 

 to adapt themselves to a cold climate, though quite possibly 

 when the mammoth flourished there were relaxations of the 

 Glacial temperature which permitted the growth of more 

 abundant vegetation for the mammoth's sustenance than would 

 now be found in such parts of Siberia as those in which the 

 mammoth's remains are so abundant. 



What the mammoth looked like we have been able to 

 ascertain from two very interesting sources of information : 

 flrstly, when the Russians began to open up Siberia in the 

 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were discovered 

 carcasses of mammoths frozen or otherwise preserved in the ice 

 and peat of Siberia. Several of these were so well preserved 

 that the flesh was eatable, the hair remained on the body, and 

 the contents of the stomach could be analysed ; these contents 

 showing that the mammoth had accustomed itself to a northern 

 vegetation, and lived mainly on the shoots of conifers. 



The second source of information is still more remarkable. 

 The Abbe Boucher de Perthes started half accidentally the 

 exploration of the remains of Prehistoric man. This exploration 

 brought to light in the deposits of French caverns Prehistoric 

 implements or ornaments of bone and ivory on which some 

 vanished race — possibly allied to the Eskimo — had graven 

 wonderfully truthful pictures of known beasts, such as the 



species within the limits of North America, though probably on closer 

 examination it will be found that some of these are only local varieties. Two 

 of these North American mastodons penetrated into South America, and from 

 them were derived two further species peculiar to the southern half of South 

 America. In the Pliocene period the mammoth penetrated from Asia into 

 North America, extending as far south as Mexico, and developing certain 

 local varieties. 



