THE MAMMOTH 179 



mammoth was a sort of big, hairy elephant, 

 now extinct, and nearly every one has a gen- 

 eral idea that it lived in the North. There is 

 some uncertainty as to whether the mammoth 

 was a mastodon, or the mastodon a mammoth, 

 and there is a great deal of misconception as 

 to the size and abundance of this big beast. It 

 may be said in passing that the mastodon is 

 only a second or third cousin of the mammoth, 

 but that the existing elephant of Asia is a very 

 near relative, certainly as near as a first cousin, 

 possibly a very great grandson. Popularly, the 

 mammoth is supposed to have been a colossus 

 somewhere from twelve to twenty feet in 

 height, beside whom modern elephants would 

 seem insignificant; but as " trout lose much in 

 dressing," so mammoths shrink in measuring, 

 and while there were doubtless Jumbos among 

 them in the way of individuals of exceptional 

 magnitude, the majority were decidedly under 

 Jumbo's size. The only mounted mammoth 

 skeleton in this country, that in the Chicago 

 Academy of Sciences, is one of the largest, the 

 thigh-bone measuring five feet one inch in 

 length, or a foot more than that of Jumbo; 



