324 COXTEIBUTION TO THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE MAMMOTH. 



original hairy covering, views are at present diverse. Through the 

 discovery of Siberian mammoths with partially preserved soft parts, 

 the question of the hairy coat is only in part definitely settled. 



All the different assertions regarding the mane of the animal are 

 due to supi^ositions, or rest entirely on untenable conjectures. For 

 in every case only a small part of the skin of the body was found 

 more or less nearlj^ intact, and in these pieces the woolly hair remained 

 onh' partially fixed, while the long bristles, if present, were at best 

 more or less broken and usually quite loose, so that they could only be 

 collected from around the carcass. 



In the Beresovka ]Mammoth the circumstances were the same as 

 regards the hairy covering of the bod3^ As in this animal, the epi- 

 dermis was decomposed, so that the hairs had rotted at the roots, the 

 short, woolly hair remained fixed only on the parts which were cov- 

 ered with earth and protected from the weather, as, for example, on 

 the left fore leg and the right hind leg, some places on the belly, 

 etc. The long bristles were only sparsely present among the remains 

 of the woolly coat, and were everywhere more or less broken. For the 

 space of a meter about the carcass the loess was in places unmis- 

 takably set with hairs, which were often assembled in larger or 

 smaller bundles. As already remarked above, it was principally on 

 the legs, where they had been covered with earth, that the thickly- 

 felted woolly hair remained, and with it the bristles, still in situ, 

 though mostly broken. On the rest of the body (leaving out of ac- 

 count, of course, the back, where the skin and soft parts were de- 

 stroyed down to the bones) little more of the hairy coat was to be 

 seen. The pieces of skin hanging to the sides on the right and left 

 showed traces of the hairy coat only on a few protected places. On 

 the protected underside the skin was most nearly intact. But here 

 also on the skin of the belly the hair was nowhere still fast. The 

 covering of woolly and bristly hairs, which was here abundant, could 

 be collected onh' after the separation and removal of the carcass from 

 the loess and the ice strata in which it had been frozen. 



The destruction of the soft parts of the head and back above men- 

 tioned were due to the imperfect provisional safeguarding of the 

 carcass before the arrival of the expedition. The carcass, which was 

 bought by the Koblymsk Cossack Javlovski from its Lamut dis- 

 coverers as a speculation, after he had inspected it, was covered again 

 with earth and stones and so left to its fate on the '' taiga " for many 

 months. The consequence of this mode of safeguarding was that 

 wild beasts partially destroyed the soft parts, and cliniatic influences 

 also did great damage. A much more durable temporary protection 

 against wild beasts and the weather, and one guaranteed to afford 

 security in the case of a valuable find, would be to erect a roughly- 

 constructed blockhouse over it. The wood for the purpose, suppos- 



