108 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. v. 



and its relation to the Indian elephant, it appears to me 

 very probable that they are two well-marked varieties 

 rather than two extinct species, and that the latter has 

 derived those trifling characters by which it is dis- 

 tinguished from the former in the untold ages of its 

 sojourn in the tropical forests of India. The possession 

 of hair and wool so remarkable in the Siberian mammoth 



FIG. 23. Upper Canine of Cave-bear, Wookey Hole, . 



depends mainly upon the climate, and cannot therefore 

 be taken to be a specific character. It is very probable 

 that the mammoth in Italy, and in the districts border- 

 ing on the Gulf of Mexico, presented as great a contrast 

 in those respects with the mammoth of the north as the 

 Thibetan mastiff and goat, which lose their fine wool 

 when brought down from the Himalaya to Kashmir. 1 



The mammoth was accompanied in its wanderings 

 from the high northern latitudes of Asia by the woolly 



1 Falconer, Nat. Hist. Rev., 1862, p. 113. On the variability in the 

 development of hair and wool, see Darwin, Variation under Domestication, 

 ii. p. 278. 



