MAMMARY GLAND 



MAMMOTH CAVE 



conclusion that the rate of reproduction varies 

 inversely with the degree of individuation, for in 

 the more highly-developed forms the numl>er of 

 offspring tends to diminish, while the parental 

 care and love proportionally increase. The adapta- 

 tions to diverse habit* and diets, the varying length 

 of life and the means of avoiding death, the migra- 

 tions of some and the hiliernations of others, the 

 struggle for mates as well as for food, the evolution 

 of family-life and even of social sympathies are 

 subjects of inquiry which will well repay observa- 

 tion and further study of mammals. 

 . For general works on mammals, see British Museum 

 Catalogues ; Bronn's Th irrreich ' Mammalia, ' by Giebel 

 and Lei-lit ; Klower in Encii. Brit, ; Lvdekker's Hntix/i 

 Mammals (1895); Bell's British Quadrupeds (2d ed. 

 Loud. 1874); Vogt and Specht, Mammals (trans. 

 Edin. 1887); Casselfs Vat. Hist., vols. i. -iii., ed. by P. 

 Mirtin Duncan; T/ie Riverside or Standard Natural 

 // tory, voL v., ed. by J. S. Kinsley (Loud, and N'ew 

 York, 1888). The last mentioned has a general biblio- 

 graphy. A treasury both of information and illustra- 

 tion is to be found in Brehm's Thierleben (new ed. 

 1890). For general structure, see the text-books of 

 Owen, Huxley, Gegenbaur, Wiedersheim, Kolleston and 

 Hatcln-tt Jackson, and Flower's Osteology af the Mam- 

 malia (3d ed., along with Gadow, Lond. 1885). For his- 

 tory and evolution of mammals, see \V. K. Parker, Mam- 

 malian Descent ( lnd. 1884); (). Schmidt, Mammalia in 

 relation to Primeval Times ( Inter. Sc. Series, Lond. 1885) ; 

 tlie papers of Cope and Marsh in the Reports of the I .S. 

 GeoL Survey ; Nicholson and Lydekker, Manual of 

 Paltfnntnloy/i ( Edin. 1889); the relevant works of Dar- 

 win, Wallace, Harckul, &c. ; Huxley, Proc. Zool. Hoc. 

 < Lond. 1880 1 ; Cope's Origin of the Fittest ( New York, 

 1887). For distribution, see A. Murray, Oeoyr. Dint, of 

 Mammals (Land. 1860); A. K. Wallace, Ve-ii/r. Dint, of 

 Animals ( Lond. 187b' ) ; Heilprin ( Inter. Sc. Series, Lond. 

 1888). 



Mammary Glands. See BREASTS. 



>l:immr<- Apple t.Wttnunea ainericana), a 

 lii^'lily i-steemed fruit of the VVest Indies (where it 

 i- ^mietimes called the Wild Apricot. ) anil tropical 

 America. It is produced by a beautiful tree or the 

 natural order Guttiferte, 60 to 70 feet high. The 

 fruit is roundish, from the size of a hen's egg to 

 that of a small melon, with a thick, leathery rind, 

 and a very delicate inner rind adhering closely to 

 the pulp, which must be carefully removed on 

 u'-munt of its bitter taste. The pulp is firm and 

 bright yellow, with a peculiar sweet and very agree- 

 able taste, and a pleasant aromatic odour. A 

 similar fruit is produced by Manimea africaiui, an 

 African species. 



Mammoth, thename (originally Tartar, through 

 the Russian ) for an extinct elephant ( Etep/tas primi- 

 genius), whose remains are sufficiently common in 

 the recent deposits of northern Europe and Asia 

 to afford a valuable supply of fossil ivory. In giM>- 

 logical time, it is only as it were yesterday that the 

 mammoth ceased to live, for its remains are often 

 found along with those of man, and it seems to have 

 ("rsisted in Britain until after the Glacial Period. 

 The cave-dwellers made use of its tusks, ami on 

 tli'-se too the prehistoric artists the literal old 

 masters cut with no tyro hand the outlines of 

 reindeer and various animals, including the mam- 

 moth itself. But the comparatively recent decease 

 of this monster elephant lias been repeatedly evi- 

 denced in a startling way by the discovery in 

 Silxtria of almost intact specimens, standing up- 

 right in the ice and fro/.en soil, with hair and skin, 

 muscles and viscera, as well as Inmes, all well 

 preserved. The first fairly complete mammoth 

 recorded was disinterred from the ice near the 

 mouth of the Lena in 1806; the fisherman who 

 discovered it had overcome his awe to the extent 

 of cutting off the tusks, wild animals hail gnawed 

 the muscles, but the hair was still on the uninjured 



parts of the skin, the brain in the skull, and the 

 eyes still stared from their sockets. Others have 

 since been disinterred, or washed out in great 

 thaws, notably one in 1846 which was so marvel- 

 lously preserved that the stomach still showed 

 young shoots of fir and pine, and a quantity of 

 chewed cones. Great numbers that we know 



Mammoth. 



nothing of must have been similarly thawed out, 

 and their frozen corpses swept seaward to swell 

 the accumulations of their remains found in the 

 Arctic seas. Their disinterment after thaws ex- 

 plains the old Silici i.-in opinion that the mammoths 

 were monster burrowprs, which died when they 

 came to the surface, while the upright position in 

 which the intact forms have l>een found suggests 

 that they had been smothered where they were 

 buried by sinking heavily into the tundra marsh. 

 Though mammoths in complete preservation are 

 rare, their tusks, teeth, and other tames have been 

 found in great abundance from almost every county 

 in England to Behring Strait, and thence into 

 North America. 



' The whole appearance of the animal,' one of 

 the discoverers writes, 'was fearfully wild and 

 strange. Our elephant is an awkward animal, but 

 compared with this mammoth it is as an Arabian 

 steed to a coarse ugly dray-horse.' It stood 13 

 feet high, 15 feet in length, with tusks 8 feet long ; 

 but some other specimens seem to have been 

 larger. The dark skin was covered with yellowish 

 to reddish soft wool about an inch long, with inter- 

 spersed brownish hairs of 4 inches, and much sparser 

 mid longer black bristles. 'The giant was thus 

 well protected against the cold.' The mammoth 

 was liker the Indian than the African survivor, but 

 it is only one of a crowd of fossil Proboscidea dis- 

 tributed in Tertiary deposits over all the great 

 continents. Mammoth, Mastodon, and Dinothe- 

 riiiin are the three most prominent types. Most 

 of them were giant animals, but there seem also to 

 have been pigmies no larger than sheep. Once 

 numerous and widespread, the elephants are now 

 represented only by the two modern species of 

 restricted distribution. To this result many factors, 

 such as. the voracity of Carnivores, the deforesting 

 of countries, the changes of climate, and the expen- 

 siveness of great bulk, have contributed. The 

 ivory exported in large quantities from Siberia is in 

 great part collected from the islands, some of which 

 are almost literally heaps of mammoth bones. 



See ELEPHANT; also, for facts, not inferences, H. H. 

 Howorth's Mammoth and the Flood (1887); Norden- 

 skiold'tt Voi/ane of the Vega; Boyd Dawkins, in Quart. 

 Jonrn. Oeol, Soc. XXXV. (1879). 



Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, is 85 miles by 

 rail SSW. of Louisville. The cave is about 10 

 miles long ; but it is said to require upwards of 150 

 miles of travelling to explore its multitudinous 



