THE MAMMOTH 179 
mammoth was a sort of big, hairy elephant, 
now extinct, and nearly every one has a gen- 
eral idea that it lived in the North. There is 
some uncertainty as to whether the mammoth 
was a mastodon, or the mastodon a mammoth, 
and there is a great deal of misconception as 
_to the size and abundance of this big beast. It 
may be said in passing that the mastodon is 
only a second or third cousin of the mammoth, 
but that the existing elephant of Asia is a very 
near relative, certainly as near as a first cousin, 
possibly a very great grandson. Popularly, the 
mammoth is supposed to have been a colossus 
somewhere from twelve to twenty feet in 
height, beside whom modern elephants would 
seem insignificant; but as “trout lose much in 
dressing,” so mammoths shrink in measuring, 
and while there were doubtless Jumbos among 
them in the way of individuals of exceptional 
magnitude, the majority were decidedly under 
Jumbo’s size. The only mounted mammoth 
skeleton in this country, that in the Chicago 
_ Academy of Sciences, is one of the largest, the 
thigh-bone measuring five feet one inch in 
length, or a foot more than that of Jumbo; 
