THE MAMMOTH. 53 



was a male, with a long mane on the neck ; the tail was 

 much mutilated, onl,y eight out of the twent^'-eight caudal 

 vertebn^ remaining ; the proboscis was gone, but the places 

 of the insertion of the muscles were visible on the skull. 

 The skin, of which about three-fourths were saved, was 

 of a dark gray color, covered with a reddish wool, and 

 coarse long black hairs. The dampness of the spot where 

 the animal had lain so long had in some degree destroyed 

 the hair. The entire skeleton, from the fore-part of the 

 skull to the end of the mutilated tail, measured sixteen 

 feet four inches ; its height was nine feet four inches. The 

 tusks measured along the curve nine feet six inches, and 

 in a straight line from the base to the point three feet 

 seven inches." ^ In 1806, Mr. Adams, of the St. Peters- 

 burg Academ}^, learning of it, repaired to the place. He 

 collected the bones, and detached the skin on the side on 

 which the animal had lain, which was well preserved, and 

 so heavy that ten men found great difficulty in transport- 

 ing it to the shore. He dug up and collected thirty-six 

 pounds of the hair which the white bears had trodden into 

 the ground. He succeeded in re-purchasing the tusks at 

 Jatusk, and forwarded the whole to St. Petersburg, a dis- 

 tance of seven thousand three hundred and thirty miles, 

 where he sold it to the Emperor of Russia for six thousand 

 dollars. It is now deposited in the Museum of the Acad- 

 emy of St. Petersburg. A view of this skeleton is given 

 in Fig. 6. It will be noticed that the dried skin still ad- 

 heres to the head and feet. 



In 1800, Gabriel Sarytschew, a Russian naturalist, while 

 traveling near the Frozen Ocean, found upon one of the 

 banks of the Alasoeia the entire body of a mammoth in a 

 complete state of preservation, enveloped in a mass of ice. 



In 1843, Middendorf, a distinguished Russian naturalist, 

 discovered a mammoth on the Tas, between the Obi and 

 * Owens' " British Fossils." 



