186 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



procession through the streets in order to 

 bring rain ? 



Out of Europe eastward into Asia the mam- 

 moth took his way, and having peopled that 

 vast region, took advantage of a land connec- 

 tion then existing between Asia and North 

 America and walked over into Alaska, in com- 

 pany with the forerunners of the bison and the 

 ancestors of the mountain sheep and Alaskan 

 brown bear. Still eastward and southward he 

 went, until he came to the Atlantic coast, the 

 latitude of southern New York roughly mark- 

 ing the southern boundary of the broad domain 

 over which the mammoth roamed undis- 

 turbed.* Not that of necessity all this vast area 

 was occupied at one time ; but this was the 

 range of the mammoth during Pleistocene 

 time, for over all this region his bones and 

 teeth are found in greater or less abundance 

 and in varying conditions of preservation. In 

 regions like parts of Siberia and Alaska, where 



* This must be taken as a very general statement, as the dis- 

 tinction between and habitats of Elephas primigenius and Ele- 

 phas columbi, the southern mammoth, are not satisfactorily 

 determined ; moreover, the two species overlap through a wide 

 area of the West and Northwest. 



