12 
serve as the totem or tribe sign of some chief. But it sets at rest 
-all question as to the co-existence of Man and the Mammoth. 
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MAMMOTH. 
We now come to consider the cause of the extinction of this 
huge elephant and of its contemporaries. Some, however, may be 
disposed at this stage to put the question—why should we do this 
for the Mammoth particularly, more than is done for other ancient 
forms of life? The answer to this is, that the disappearance of the 
Mammoth, and some at least of its contemporaries) seems to have 
-been totally unlike that of other previously existing creatures. The 
-old lizards of the sea, and of the Weald of Kent and Sussex, among 
the rest, disappeared as far as we know gradually, and owing to 
the ever-varying change going on in their surroundings. In the 
life history of their order we can trace a regular progress; the 
beginnings were small; there was a crescendo, a diminuendo, a 
final disappearance. But these old elephants, the origin of which 
is as I have said so difficult for the evolutionist to trace seem to 
have died out as suddenly as they came. They vanish abruptly, 
and we might say almost simultaneously, in their wide distribution, 
in the plenitude of their numbers, in the zenith of their physical 
development. The remains of older creatures lie singly, scattered; 
they are rare, and their separate deaths can generally be readily 
-accounted for; whereas the skeletons and carcases of Mammoths 
lie scattered over northern Asia by thousands, on, or at a very short 
‘distance below the surface, unpetrified. This is so with no other 
-creature if we except their immediate associates. Hence the extinc- 
tion provokes special enquiry and research. 
In the opinion of many very thoughtful men the destruction of 
the Mammoth was closely connected with the disappearance of 
Paleolithic Man from his former haunts; but in what I have to 
‘say, although I cannot help alluding to the human contemporaries 
of the Mammoth I wish to keep that question quite apart from our 
present one. 
Between the deposits in which the remains of the Mammoth are 
found, associated with those of the earliest men—men of the 
Paleolithic Age, and higher deposits containing traces of the men 
of the Polished Stene Age (Neolithic) there is a ‘‘ great gap,’’ a very 
-abrupt change. There is no gradation, no evolution traceable, no 
connection whatever; and this is the case whether the deposits in 
-question occur in caves or in the open grounds. The men of the 
Early Stone Age were a race of hunters and fishers; they had no 
domestic animals, and they knew nothing of agriculture; and so 
far as we know they have left behind no representative races of 
