182 SIAMMALS. 



America. These, from tlicir position, may reasonably be supposed to have been adapted to cold 

 climates; and as the remains are found only on the range of the Andes, it does not seem improbable, 

 that, when the glacial epoch advanced in North America, it forced the M. giganteus or some other 

 species south before it, driving it along the ridges of the Mexican mountains to the Andes. Many 

 a bitter freeze and sore extremitj' they maj' have borne before they left their pine-covered 

 land, but ere trees and vegetation had quite disappeared before the advancing ice, they must 

 have turned their broad backs to the blinding snow and heavy drift and, crashing through the 

 mountain forests of Mexico, have made their way southwards. Was their way taken through 

 unwonted timber, and did they taste strange food on the road, or did their native woods migrate 

 with them, and accompany them, pari passu, southwards in the slow progress of their journey, — 

 a journey not of days or years, but of centuries and ages? Probably both. Probably the jjine 

 found itself growing side by side with the aloes, so long as the temperature allowed them to 

 live ; and we have now in the numerous pines and firs, which clothe the Mexican moimtains the 

 descendants of those North American species, which were driven with the Mastodon before the 

 glacial cold ; and both, after undergoing modification by process of development and altered con- 

 ditions, have left evidence of their stay there, the Mastodon in the remains of M. Axdium and 

 M. HuMBOLDTii, now found on the range of the Cordillera, and the conifers in the Libgcedri 

 and Saxegotheas. 



The other section of Mastodons (Tetralophodonts) were apparently suited to a warmer climate, 

 at least they are chiefly found in India, Ava, &c. Some, however, inhabited Europe, — more 

 especially the southern countries. 



Mammoth — The Mammoth is, on many accounts, the most interesting of the Elephants, 

 whether living or extinct. It inhabited the northern hemisphere, and apparently our own land 

 long after man had taken his jjlace in creation — occasionally furnishing, there is little doubt, a 

 hard-won meal to our savage and hungry ancestors. Alongside its remains, and in beds 

 proclaiming their simultaneous deposit, flint-knives, hatchets, bone bodkins and needles, obviously 

 the work of man, have been found, and the fact of the co-existence of man and the Mammoth 

 has now almost ceased to be matter of dispute. 



It is now felt that the old traditions of the Red Indians of America as to the existence of an 

 enormous animal, with a snout like an arm, may not be idle tales, but the genuine traditions of what 

 actually had been seen by the predecessors of the present race (it would be too bold to say ances- 

 tors, for many races may have been conquered, and enslaved, died out and been replaced, since 

 a living man in these lands looked on a living MaTumotli). The Chinese records too, according 

 to M. Boitard, speak of an animal living to the north, in extreme cold, shaped like a rat, but as 

 large as an Elephant, furnishing excellent ivory ; and other nations have similar traditions. 

 Moreover, not only have their scattered bones, and even their perfect skeletons, been found, but 

 the carcasses of individuals have been found congealed in ice in Nature's larder in the frozen 

 regions of Siberia. It is no wonder, therefore, that a special halo of interest surrounds the 

 Mammoth. 



Thanks to the discovery of the frozen carcasses, we have a tolerably complete knowledge both of 

 the outward form of this animal, and of its internal organs and structure. Every one knows that 

 the first carcass was discovered by a Tongause fisherman in 1799, in a mass of ice near the place 

 where Pallas' Rhinoceros had been found ; and the bones and skin of that sjjcfimcn, or at 



