62 MJTUS AMJ 



straight line, seventeen feet ; length of the tusks, ten feet seven inches ; weigliC 

 of a grinder, four pounds ten ounces; of the whole skeleton, one thousand 

 pounds. 



In 1799, upon the shores of the Frozen Ocean, near the mouth of the river 

 Leue, in Siberia, a toungouse chief discovered, in the midst of a rock of ice, a 

 fubstance which did not resemble the floating pieces of wood usually found there: 

 he endeavoured in vain to discover what it was at that time : about the close of 

 the second summer the melting of the ice enabled him to know that it was a 

 mammoth ; but he could not succeed in obtaining the tusks of the animal until 

 the end of the 5th year, when the ice which endtosed it, having partly melted, 

 the level became sloped, and this enorin >us mass, pushed forward by its own 

 weight, fell over upon its side on a sand bank. In March, 1804, the chief 

 SchoumachofF obtained the tusks and sold them for fifty roubles. In the sum- 

 mer of 1806, Michael Adams, a member of the Academy of St. Petersburg!], 

 visited the mammoth in company with the chief, and found it iu a very mutilated 

 state The proprietor was content with the profit, he had already derived from 

 it, and the jakouts of the neighbourhood tore off the flesh, with which they fed 

 their dogs. Ferocious animals, white bears of the north pole, gluttons, wolves . 

 and foxes, 'preyed upon it also, and their burrows were seen in the neighbour 

 hood. The skeleton, almost completely unfleshed was entire, with the excep- 

 tion of one of the forefeet. The spindyle, from the head to the oscoccygis, a 

 shoulder blade, the pelvis, and the remains of the three extremities, were still 

 tightly attached by the ligaments of the joints, and by strips of skin on the exte- 

 rior side of the carcass. The head was covered with a dry skia ; one of the ear?, 

 well preserved, was furnished with u tufl of bristles. The eyes were also pre- 

 served, and the ball of the left eye could be distinguished The tip of the 

 tinder lip had been eaten away, and the upper pan being destroyed, exhibited 

 tine teeth. The brain was still in the cranium, but it appeared dry. The parts 

 least damaged vvere a forefoot and a hind ope,, covered with skin, and having 

 still the sole attached. According to the assertion of tfie chief, the animal had 

 'been so large and well fed, that its belly hung down below the knee joints. This; 

 animal was a male, with a long mane at its neck ; but it had no tail, and no trunk. 

 The skin, three fourths of which mr. Adams took wjth Kim, is a deep gray, and 

 covered with a reddish hair, and black bristles, and vya ; of such extraordinary 

 weight, that ten persons moved it with threat difficulty. Ths entire carcass (the 

 hones of which he collected on the spot, and the tusks he afterwards procured) i$ 

 abont nine feet high and fourteen feet long, english measure, from the tip of the 

 ?K>se to the coccyx ; without, however, comprehending the two horns, or tusks, 

 each of which is a toise and a half long, and both together weigh four hundred 

 Th head alooe weighs fw- hundred and '-<ty pojinu^, Mr. 



