188 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 
ible, have been advanced to account for their 
extermination — they perished -of starvation; 
they were overtaken by floods on their sup- 
posed migrations and drowned in detachments; — 
they fell through the ice, equally in dca 
ments, and were swept out to sea. But all” 
we can safely say is that long ages. ago. 
the last one perished off the face of the earth. 
Strange it is, too, that these mighty beasts, 
whose bulk was ample to protect them against 
four-footed foes, and whose woolly coat was 
proof against the cold, should have utterly van- 
ished. ‘They ranged from England eastwe 
to New York, almost around the world ; from 
the Alps to the Arctic Ocean; and in such 
numbers that to-day their tusks are articles of 
commerce, and fossil ivory has its price curre nts 
as well as wheat. Mr. Boyd Dawkins thinks — 
that the mammoth was actually exterminate i 
by early man, but, even granting that thi 
might be true for southern and western Bu 
rope, it could not be true of the herds that in- 
habited the wastes of Siberia, or of the thedl 2 
sands that flourished in Alaska and the western — 
United States. So far as man is concerned, 
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