EXTINCT MAMMOTHS. 335 



mense beasts; the mastodon had long straight tusks, 

 directed forwards instead of downwards as in the present 

 elephants; and the mammoth enormous tusks which 

 curled upwards. Large numbers of these animals, 

 especially of the latter species, have been found embedded 

 in the ice in arctic Siberia and other places, in a 

 perfect state of preservation, the hair and skin which 

 still existed unchanged showing that they were very 

 much like the modern elephant in colour. * 



The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives a list of 22 

 species of mammoths, f and at least two kinds of 

 Rhinoceri (Rhinocerus Merekii, and R. Antiquitatis] 

 were found embedded in the ice near the Lena River, 

 which according to Professor Nordenskiold, " may 

 have lived hundreds of thousands, or even millions of 

 years ago. " The probabilities are that the era when 

 these creatures flourished, may certainly be measured 

 by millions of years; as regards the Mastodon, for in- 

 stance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says, " The range 

 of the genus Mastodon, in time" (that is geological 

 time) "was from the middle of the Miocene period to 

 the end of the Pliocene, when they became extinct;" ** 

 that would most assuredly relegate them back millions 

 of years, beyond the commencement of historic time. 

 When we speak of geological time, we must be 

 understood to refer to ages whose remoteness must 

 almost always be measured in millions, rather than in 

 thousands of years. Even man himself, a modern 



* See our Arctic section with reference to these and other extinct 

 monsters. 



j EncycL Brit. Vol. xv., 9th edit., pp. 622-3. 



Voyage of the Vega, by Professor A. E. Nordenskiold, translated 

 by Alexander Leslie, 1881, pp. 411-12. 



** Encycl. Brit., Vol xv., gth edit., p. 622. 



