9 
plished mummy-preparer of Egypt; and above all most interesting 
to us because associated with the early history of our race. The 
huge reptiles of the Secondary Age flourished and passed away 
unmarked by human eye ; the Deinotherium and (on our side of 
the world at least) the Mastodon never had the honour of receiving 
a flint arrow head from the bow of the human hunter. But Palco- 
lithic Man chased the shaggy Mammoth, killed him and ate him; 
in fact hastened his extinction, as the men of the iron and steel 
age are hastening that of his modern representative. 
So familiar are we with it that its very name, Mammoth, 
‘borrowed from some half-savage tribe in the wilds of Siberia, 
has become an English word, and we use it nowadays to describe 
anything of monstrous size, Mammoth Caves, Mammoth Springs, 
Mammoth Hippodromes, &c. In representing the forms of reptiles 
and even of most of the mammals of past ages we have to depend 
on the skill of the Comparative Anatomist, and a little exercise of 
of the artist’s imagination ; but we sketch the mammoth as it has 
‘been actually seen. 
The ages which have elapsed since our Chalk formations became 
dry land have been divided by geologists into five lesser periods, 
each numbering probably hundreds of thousands of years. During 
the first three of them the climate of the northern parts of the 
world was iropical or sub-tropical, but during the fourth the 
temperature was gradually lowered, until at last a period set in, 
So severe that it is known as the Great Ice Age, or the Glaczal 
Period ;—a time when the north and West of England were 
swathed in ice and snow, and glaciers moved slowly down all 
our great valleys. Astronomers tell us this cold was greatest 
about 210,000 years ago, and that it disappeared probably about 
80,000 years ago, since when the climate has gradually settled 
into its present condition. Now the Mammoth appears to 
have been called into existence just before this ice period, and 
many remains have also been found in inter-glacial deposits, 
representing milder intervals of a few thousand years, which 
occasionally prevailed. At the close of the Ice age, however, the 
Mammoth multiplied exceedingly, but seems always to have 
favonred a cold climate, for which he was well fitted by bis warm 
covering, not possessed because not required by his modern 
descendant. Who were his ancestors, how he came here, and 
_ where he came from, are questions more easily asked than answered. 
But he himself is a decidedly tangible creature and it wiil be in- 
teresting to follow out (though in bare outline) the steps by which 
he became the familiar figure he is to the critical and scientific 
eye of the nineteenth century. 
From very early historical times people were familiar with the 
occasional occurrence in the soil of huge teeth and bones such as 
