222 ANIMAL LIFE PAST AND PRESENT. 



extremely high latitudes. The skins of these northern 

 tigers are far handsomer than those from India, the 

 hair being long and comparatively shaggy, so as to 

 protect its owner from the bitter cold. The case of 

 the Indian Elephant and the Mammoth is a precisely 

 similar one, the existing Indian species having, as we 

 all know, an almost naked skin, while the Siberian 

 Mammoth was clothed with long shaggy hair, as we 

 learn not only from its frozen remains, but also from 

 the rude pictures of the living animal drawn many 

 centuries ago on fragments of its own tusks by the old 

 pre- historic hunters of the Dordogne. 



In mentioning tusks, we should not forget that the 

 modern Elephants differ from many of the old Masto- 

 dons in having tusks only in the upper jaw, while in 

 the latter they were also present in the lower. We 

 have, therefore, here also another instance of the 

 greater specialisation of the recent types. 



In showing that with the advance of time the 

 Elephants have gradually developed an extremely 

 complex type of grinding-tooth from a comparatively 

 simple one, we find that they occupy a parallel posi- 

 tion with that held by the other two great groups of 

 the Ungulate order. 



There is, however, one very important point whereby 

 the Elephants differ from these two groups, namely, 

 that they have not undergone any contemporaneous 

 modification in the structure of the foot. The feet 

 of an Elephant are, indeed, of an exceedingly primitive 

 type, having five complete toes, and being more like 



