AGE OF MAMMALS. 295 



much longer than in elephants of our time, and that 

 they are curved upward and backward with a broad 

 sweep. This animal had long black hair, mingled with 

 which there was a coat of reddish-brown wool. Such a 

 covering undoubtedly fitted it to bear a colder climate 

 than it could bear with the ordinary covering of ele- 

 phants. At the same time, it is clear, from the fact that 

 so many animals of the same kinds with those that now 

 flourish in warm regions then existed in northern lati- 

 tudes, that the climate of the far north was, at least, 

 much less cold than it is now. Indeed, the woolly cov- 

 ering of the mammoth of Siberia simply indicates that 

 the climate there was only so much cooler than it is 

 where elephants are accustomed to live now, that this 

 additional covering was required for its comfort, and yet 

 it was not so cold as absolutely to forbid the existence 

 of animals of that nature, as is the case in that region at 

 the present time. Besides, if arctic cold reigned there 

 as it does now, the vegetation could not have been suffi- 

 cient for the sustenance of any number of these enor- 

 mous quadrupeds. The remains of the mammoth show 

 that great herds lived there. The tusks which are found 

 furnish a large part of the ivory in the market. The Li- 

 akhow Islands, lying off the north coast of Asia, are com- 

 posed to a great extent of mammoth bones, cemented 

 together by sand and ice, and in the year 1821 as much 

 as 20,000 pounds of fossil ivory was obtained from the 

 island of New Siberia, some of the tusks weighing near- 

 ly 500 pounds. The mammoth lived in herds in En- 

 gland. Its remains have also been found in North Amer- 

 ica, but not much below the latitude of 40. Below this 

 level in this country another species of elephant flour- 

 ished, and was very abundant in the South, in the Valley 

 of the Mississippi. On the island of Malta there have 

 been found the bones of a pigmy elephant which was 

 about the size of a calf. 



406. The St. Petersburg Skeleton. There is a skele- 



