132 ELEPHANTS 



of southeastern New York undoubtedly still entomb the 

 fossil remains of many an undiscovered Mastodon, hermet- 

 ically sealed and awaiting the steam-shovel of the modern 

 excavator. 



The Mammoths of North America were true elephants, 

 and three species are known. 



The Imperial Mammoth (Elephas imperator) was a great, 

 long-haired giant of giants; for at the shoulders he attained 

 the amazing height of 13 feet 6 inches! In the museum of 

 the Chicago Academy of Sciences there stands the skeleton 

 of a Mammoth that appears to have had a living height of at 

 least 13 feet. Tusks of Mammoths have been found in Alaska 

 measuring, so it is reported, up to 11 feet in length. 



The fact that the Mammoths were covered with long, 

 very coarse hair, of a dark-brown color, has been thoroughly 

 established by the discovery in northern Siberia, fast frozen 

 in great masses of ice and earth, of several mammoth carcasses 

 in the flesh ! To dogs and unimaginative men of the hardy 

 north Siberia variety, some of this flesh was edible; and some 

 of those specimens yielded excellent skeletons for the museums 

 of Russia. 



The Imperial Mammoth, excepting for a long, wedge- 

 shaped excursion reaching far down into Mexico, was strictly 

 an animal of the western half of the United States. Its 

 eastern boundary reached only to western Missouri and Ar- 

 kansas. 



The Columbian Mammoth (Elephas columbi) was almost 

 precisely of the same size as the largest living African ele- 

 phants, 11 feet at the shoulders. A very fine mounted skele- 



