40 



NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PRIMEVAL WORLD. 



resembled that of the Indian elephant ; its body was 

 cumbrous; its legs shorter than those of the latter 

 animal, with which in habits, however, it closely cor- 

 responded. 



The fossil bones of the Mammoth have been fre- 

 quently discovered, and in almost all parts of Europe ; 

 as, for instance, in Scandinavia, in Ireland, in Germany, 

 in Central Europe, in Poland, in Central and Southern 

 i, in Greece, Spain, Italy, and England. They 



Mammoth restored. 



have also been found in Asia, Africa, and the New 

 World. But they occur in the greatest abundance in 

 the regions of northern Europe, where no modern 

 elephant could possibly exist. " There is not," says 

 Pallas, " in the whole of Asiatic Eussia, from the Don 

 to the extremity of the Tchertchian promontory, any 

 brook or river, especially of those which flow in the 

 plains, on whose banks some bones of elephants and 

 other animals foreign to the climate have not been 

 found. But in the more elevated regions, the primitive 

 and schistose chains, they are wanting, as are marine 

 petrifactions. In the lower slopes, and in the great 

 muddy and sandy plains, above all in places which 

 are swept by rivers and brooks, they are always met 

 with, which proves that we should assuredly find them 

 throughout the whole extent of the country, if we had 

 the same means of searching for them." 



Connected with the discovery of these remains some 

 extraordinary but well authenticated stories are related : 

 In 1799 a Tungusian fisherman observed among the 

 icebergs, on the shore of the Frozen Sea, near the 

 mouth of the river Lena, a strangely-shaped block which 

 he could not understand. The following year he per- 

 ceived that this block was further detached from the 

 surrounding mass of ice, but was still unable to divine 

 its character. Towards the close of the third year one 

 whole side was exposed to view, and he then discovered 

 the entire flank and tusks of the Mammoth protruding 



from the ice. It was not till the fifth year that, undci 

 the influence of a remarkably genial spring, the enor- 

 mous mass became stranded on a sand-bank of the 

 coast. In the month of March, 1805, the fisherman 

 removed the tusks. 



Two years after this Mr. Adams, of the St. Peters- 

 burg Academy, travelling in the suite of Count 

 Golovkin, whom the czar of Russia had despatched on 

 an embassy to China, obtained information of these 

 curious incidents, and hastened 

 to examine the locality. He 

 found the animal considerably 

 mutilated. The Yakoutskes 

 had cut off the flesh, so won- 

 derfully preserved for thousands 

 of years, to feed their dogs, and 

 it had also been mangled by 

 wild beasts. Nevertheless, the 

 bkeleton remained nearly intact, 

 with the exception of one fore- 

 foot. The spine of the back, a 

 scapula, the pelvis, and the 

 remains of the three limbs, were 

 still connected by the ligaments 

 and a portion of the skin ; the 

 missing scapula was found in 

 the immediate neighbourhood. 

 A dry skin covered the head ; 

 one of the ears, well preserved, 

 was furnished with a tuft of 

 hair ; you might still distinguish 

 the balls of the eyes ; the brain, 

 but dried up, still occupied its 

 place in the cranium ; the under 

 lip had been rubbed, and the 

 upper lip destroyed so as to expose the jaws; a flowing 

 mane adorned the top of the neck; the skin was 

 covered with tufts of black hair and reddish wool. 

 The remains of the animal were so bulky that it was 

 with difficulty ten persons carried them. Upwards of 

 thirty pounds weight of hair and wool was recovered 

 which the white bears had plundered, and, devouring 

 the flesh, had buried in the moist soil. The animal was 

 a male; its tusks exceeded nine feet in length, and 

 the head, without the tusks, weighed upwards of four 

 hundredweight. 



Figuier remarks that it is very strange that the 

 East Indies, one of the only two regions now inhabited 

 by the elephant, should be the sole country where the 

 fossil bones of the Mammoth have not been discovered. 

 It is evident, from the data gathered by geologists, that 

 during the Post-tertiary epoch this colossal quadruped 

 inhabited every country of the globe. But the only 

 climates now suitable to the race of elephants are those 

 of Africa and India, in other words, tropical climates : 

 hence we must infer that at the epoch of the Mammoth 

 and the Mastodon, the temperature of the earth was 

 considerably higher than now obtains, or else that 

 these extinct animals were adapted for inhabiting a 

 colder region than their successors can now endure. 



One of the most formidable of the antediluvian 

 Carnivora seems to have been the Ursiis spelccus, or 

 Cave Bear. 



