134 Journey to the Frozen- Sea, and 



who asserts that the mammoth occupies the second 

 place among the extinct species of animals ? As I do 

 not intend, in this place, to make an exact comparison 

 of the skeletons of a mammoth and an elephant, I shall 

 content myself with relating here some characteristic 

 marks which distinguish the two species : I reserve for 

 a particular memoir some more detailed observations 

 upon this subject. I shall here recapitulate the motives 

 which induced me to adopt the opinion of M. Cuvier. 



1. If the writers whom I have mentioned have ac- 

 tually made, as I suppose, zootomical comparisons, 

 they have been able to do so very incompletely, and 

 upon detached pieces ; for neither the head, nor the 

 whole vertebrae, nor the feet of the mammoth covered 

 with flesh and hair, and furnished with the sole, have 

 ever yet been examined, when collected together, by 

 any writer. 



The presence of the coccyx, which finishes the ver- 

 tebral column, convinces me that the animal has had a 

 very short and thick tail, like its feet : besides, its be- 

 ing every where covered with bristles induces me to 

 think that they cannot be those of an ordinary elephant. 



2. The teeth of the mammoth are harder, heavier, 

 and more twisted in a different direction than the teeth 

 of an elephant. Ivory-turners, who have wrought upon 

 these two substances, say, that the mammoth's horn, 

 by its colour and inferior density, differs considerably 

 from ivory. I have seen some of them which formed 

 in their curvature three-fourths of a circle ; and, at 



