188 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



ible, have been advanced to account for their 

 extermination — they perished of starvation ; 

 they were overtaken by floods on their sup- 

 posed migrations and drowned in detachments ; 

 they fell through the ice, equally in detach- 

 ments, and were swept out to sea. But all 

 we can safely say is that long ages ago 

 the last one perished off the face of the earth. 

 Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts, 

 whose bulk was ample to protect them against 

 four-footed foes, and whose woolly coat was 

 proof against the cold, should have utterly van- 

 ished. They ranged from England eastward 

 to IS^ew York, almost around the world ; from 

 the Alps to the Arctic Ocean ; and in such 

 numbers that to-day their tusks are articles of 

 commerce, and fossil ivory has its price current 

 as well as wheat. Mr. Boyd Dawkins thinks 

 that the mammoth was actually exterminated 

 by early man, but, even granting that this 

 might be true for southern and western Eu- 

 rope, it could not be true of the herds that in- 

 habited the wastes of Siberia, or of the thou- 

 sands that flourished in Alaska and the western 

 United States. So far as man is concerned. 



