ILLtSTRATlO^i. , 61 



nated maramouts, or mammoths, from the russian name, supposed to have been 

 derived from the hebrew behemoth. BufFon was of opinion that, independently 

 of the elephant and hippopotamus whose relicks are equally found in the tw 

 continents, another animal, common to both, has formerly existed ; the size of 

 which has greatly exceeded that of the largest elephants ; and, at one period, ho 

 supposed that it was seven times larger. Pallas believed, that the bones found 

 in Siberia were those of the elephant and rhinoceros, and said that those countries, 

 which are now desolated by the rigours of intense cold, have formerly enjoyed 

 all the advantages of the soutfieru latitudes. Gmelin supposes, that vast inun- 

 dations in the south had drive0the elephants to the north, where they would all 

 at once perish by the rigour of the climate. Others were of opinion that the tusk 

 and skeleton belonged to the elephant, and the molares to the hippopotamus ; as 

 the grinders were not those of the former : some thought they were the bones of 

 the hippopotamus only ; others of a monster of the ocean ; and the ahbe Clavjjrero 

 pays, " that they may, from what appears, have belonged to giants of the human, 

 as well as of any other, race." Jefferson asserts " that the skeleton of the mam- 

 moth bespeaks an animal of five or six times the cubit volume of the elephant ; 

 and that the grinders are five times as large, are square, and the grinding surface 

 studded with four or five rows of blunt points, whereas those of the elephant are 

 broad and thin, and their grinding surface flat." To mention all the hypotheses 

 und fables which this subject has produced, would be useless, and consume too 

 much time ; but 1 cannot omit stating two or three more on account of their 

 whimsical absurdity. One writer says that the bones in question are the remain* 

 of certain angelic beings, the original tenants of this our terrestrial globe T in its 

 primitive state, till, for their transgressions, both were involved in ruin, after 

 which this shattered planet was refitted for its present inhabitants. Another 

 imagines that at some remote period, the place in which the bones were found 

 might have laid in the track of a conqueror unknown to the historians of Eu- 

 rope ; that it might have been the scene of a battle, and the animals in question 

 part of the baggage train destroyed by slaughter or disease, and left in the hurry 

 of flight, or of pursuit, to puzzle and set at defiance generations then unborn. 



Within a few years a better opportunity has been afforded of forming just 

 conclusions respecting this animal. Within the extent of a few miles nine or ten 

 skeletons have been discovered at the bottom of marl pits, in Orange and Ulster 

 Bounties, and (from the calcarious nature of the substance in which they were 

 (Deposited) in a high state of preservation. One of these skeletons has been 

 mounted and placed in its natural form, and with almost all the bones, in Peak's 

 Museum, in Philadelphia. Its height over the shoulders is eleven feet j over 

 :.he hips, nine feet ; from the chin to the rump, fifteen feet ; from the point of the 

 risks to the end of the tail, following the curve, thirty-one feet ; length in a 



