430 UNGULATA 



up from the bottom of the sea by the fishermen who ply their 

 trade in the German Ocean, having been washed out of the water- 

 worn cliffs of the eastern counties of England. In Scotland and 

 Ireland its remains are less abundant, but they have been found in 

 vast numbers at various localities throughout the greater part of 

 Central Europe (as far south as Santander in Spain and Rome), 

 Northern Asia, and the northern part of the American continent, 

 though the exact distribution of the Mammoth in the New World 

 is still a question of debate. It has not hitherto been met with in 

 any part of Scandinavia or Finland. 



In point of time, the Mammoth belongs exclusively to the 

 Pleistocene epoch, and it was undoubtedly contemporaneous with 

 man in France, and probably elsewhere. There is evidence to show 

 that it existed in Britain before, during, and after the glacial period. 



As before indicated, it is in the northern part of Siberia that 

 its remains have been found in the greatest abundance, and in 

 quite exceptional conditions of preservation. For a very long 

 period there has been from that region a regular export of 

 Mammoth ivory in a state fit for commercial purposes, both east- 

 ward to China and westward to Europe. In the middle of the tenth 

 century an active trade was carried on at Khiva in fossil ivory, 

 which was fashioned into combs, vases, and other objects, as related 

 by Abu '1 Kasim, an Arab writer of that period. Middendorff 

 reckoned that the number of tusks which have yearly come into 

 the market during the last two centuries has been at least a hundred 

 pairs, and Nordenskiold, from personal observation, considers this 

 calculation as probably rather too low than too high. They are 

 found at all suitable places along the whole line of the shore 

 between the mouth of the Obi and Behring Straits, and the farther 

 north the more numerous do they become, the islands of New 

 Siberia being now one of the most favourite collecting localities. 

 The soil of Bear Island and of Liachoff Islands is said to consist only 

 of sand and ice with such quantities of Mammoth bones as almost 

 to compose its chief substance. The remains are not only found 

 around the mouths of the great rivers, as would be the case if the 

 carcases had been washed down from more southern localities in 

 the interior of the continent, but are imbedded in the frozen soil 

 in such circumstances as to indicate that the animals had lived not 

 far from the localities in which they are now found, and they are 

 exposed either by the melting of the ice in unusually warm 

 summers or by the washing away of the sea cliffs or river banks 

 by storms or floods. In this way the bodies of more or less nearly 

 perfect animals, often standing in the erect position, with the soft 

 parts and hairy covering entire, have been brought to light. 



References to the principal recorded discoveries of this kind, 

 and to the numerous speculations to which they have given rise, 



