MAMMALS. 619 



never hurried, never tripped on the ropes or got in the way of those 

 already confined. One could almost fancy there was a dry humor in the 

 way the decoys played with the fears of the wild herd, and made light of 

 their efforts at resistance; they drove them forward, forced them back, 

 forced them to rise when they lay down, or when it was necessary to keep 

 them down, knelt upon them to keep them from rising until the ropes 

 were secured. 



There is another side to the elephant besides that detailed in most 

 works. Usually the elephant is pictured as a mild and gentle animal ; but 

 in reality, even among those in our menageries, there are many instances 

 where the whole apparent docility is the result of the fear of the keeper's 

 prod. Jumbo had one side for the public, and another for private exhibi- 

 tions. Elephants are ruled not by love, but by fear ; a mouse will frighten 

 them and even put them in a perfect terror. The keeper must constantly 

 keep them in subjection ; and if they see the slightest exhibition of fear on 

 his part, the papers soon chronicle the fact that the ' Emperor ' accidently 

 killed his master. The picture of this side of the elephant's character 

 which is drawn in Charles Reade's ' Jack of All Trades ' is not greatly 

 overdone. 



In most cases the fossil members of a group can have but little 

 popular interest, but the extinct relatives of the elephant are too often 

 mentioned to be omitted here. Probably no extinct animals are more 

 familiar to all, at least by name, than the mammoth and the mastodon, and 

 there is every reason to believe that both have become extinct since the 

 advent of man upon this planet. The mammoths were most like the ele- 

 phant in structure, having the same general character of teeth ; while the 

 mastodons had those instruments of mastication built on a somewhat 

 different plan, and their grinding surface presents a strange arrangement 

 of comparatively large hills and valleys. Of the several species of mam- 

 moths, none has acquired more celebrity than the Siberian species. It was 

 a hairy beast, living no one knows exactly how recently in that land of 

 snow. At the close of the last century a hunter found the carcasses of some 

 of these animals imbedded in the ice, the flesh being in so fresh a condi- 

 tion that the dogs would eat it. With us mastodon remains are far more 

 abundant than those of mammoths, and of the latter but rarely is any tiling 

 except the teeth found. Mastodons, however, have become so common, 

 that, except in the case of unusually perfect specimens, only newspaper 

 record is made of the fact. The remains are usually found in the peat of 

 some swamp, and the inference is that the animal became mired, and died 

 where the bones are found. 



