THE MAMMOTH. 199 



It is greatly to be hoped that some day our National Treasure 

 House at South Kensington may be enriched with a complete 

 Mammoth skeleton from British soil. 



The Chinese, as might be expected, heard of the ISIammoth 

 long before Europeans did, and they have some strange stories 

 about it. In the northern part of Siberia, so great is the abun- 

 dance of Mammoth tusks, that for a very long period there has been 

 a regular export of Mammoth ivory, both eastward to China and 

 westward to Europe. Even in the middle of the tenth century 

 an active trade was carried on at Khiva in fossil ivory, which was 

 fashioned into combs, vases, and other objects, as related by an 

 Arab writer of that time. Middendorf reckoned that the number 

 of fossil tusks which have yearly come into the market, during the 

 last two centuries, has been at least a hundred pairs — an estimate 

 which Nordenskiold considers as well within the mark. They 

 are found all along the line of the shore between the mouth of 

 the Obi and Behring Straits, and the further north a traveller 

 goes, the more numerous does he find them. The soil of Bear 

 Island and of the Liachoff Islands (New Siberia) is said to consist 

 only of sand and ice with such' quantities of Mammoth bones 

 that it appears as if they were almost made up of bones and 

 tusks. Every summer numbers of fishermen make for these 

 islands to collect fossil ivory, and during the winter immense 

 caravans return laden with Mammoth tusks. The convoys are 

 drawn by dogs, and in this way the ivory reaches both the ancient 

 Eastern and the newer Western markets. 



It is evident from the Chinese legends that the frozen bodies 

 of Mammoths have for ages past been either seen by, or reported 

 to, members of the celestial empire, for it is mentioned in some 

 of their old books as an animal that lives underground. In a 

 great Chinese work on natural history, written in the sixteenth 

 century, the following quaint description occurs : " The animal 

 named tien-schu, of which w^e have already spoken, in the ancient 

 work upon the ceremonial entitled Lyki [a work of the fifth century 



