MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS. 247 



through the wilderness which separated them from their 

 "land of promise." 



Geological evidences of a great and somewhat sudden 

 change of climate throughout the North Temperate Zone, 

 in times geologically recent, are too familiar to require 

 more than a mere mention. The greater part of Europe, 

 and all America, to the latitude of 36, were once buried 

 beneath sheets of glacier ice. In Europe we have the 

 evidence of the presence of man while the continental 

 glaciers were flooding the rivers of France by their rapid 

 dissolution. At the same time the mammoth was there. 

 While thousands of his fellow-mammoths were lying frozen 

 and stark in the icy cemeteries of the North, a few of 

 the giants of a former age had chanced to dwell in lati- 

 tudes which perpetual snow had not invaded. These were 

 a part of the game which the primeval inhabitants of 

 Europe pursued. Of his ivory they made handles for their 

 implements and weapons. On his ivory they etched fig- 

 ures of the maned and shaggy proboscidian, of which 

 neither history nor tradition has preserved the memory.* 

 The bones and teeth of the mammoth are strewed through 

 all the cavern homes and sequestered haunts of the oldest 

 tribes who hunted and fought upon the plains and along 

 the valleys of Europe. 



The reader will irresistibly inquire: "How many years 

 have elapsed since Siberian elephants were encased in ice? 

 How many since their survivors thundered through the 



* The entire absence of such tradition from Europe, so far as known, seems 

 to imply that the present race exterminated or expelled their predecessors, in- 

 stead of becoming consolidated with them, as has been sometimes conjectured. 

 The Indians of America, on the contrary, retained some tradition of the elephant 

 and mastodon. In view of the supposition that the Finns and Lapps represent 

 the premediterranean population of Europe, it would be extremely interesting to 

 know if they retain any national recollections of the hairy mammoth. 



