148 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



pounds, or the largest shown at Chicago in 1893, which 

 was seven feet six inches long, and weighed 176 pounds. 

 The largest, most beautiful tusks, probably, ever seen 

 in this country were a pair brought from Zanzibar and 

 displayed by Messrs. Tiffany & Company in 1900. The 

 measurements and weights of these were as follows: 

 length along outer curve, ten feet and three-fourths of 

 an inch, circumference one foot, eleven inches, weight, 

 224 pounds; length along outer curve, ten feet, three 

 and one-half inches, circumference two feet and one- 

 fourth of an inch, weight, 239 pounds. As regards size 

 of tusks it is to be borne in mind that in the good old 

 days animals lived out their alloted lives and that in the 

 case of the mammoth his tusks had a chance to reach 

 their full growth, while now-a-days few elephants with 

 large tusks are allowed to reach their maximum growth. 

 For our knowledge of the external appearance of the 

 mammoth we are indebted to the more or less entire 

 examples which have been found at various times in 

 Siberia, but mainly to the noted specimen found in 1799 

 near the Lena, embedded in the ice, where it had been 

 reposing, so geologists tell us, anywhere from 10,000 

 to 50,000 years. How the creature gradually thawed 

 out of its icy tomb, and the tusks were taken by the dis- 

 coverer and sold for ivory; how the dogs fed upon the 

 flesh in summer, while bears and wolves feasted upon it 

 in winter; how the animal was within an ace of being 

 utterly lost to science when, at the last moment, the 

 mutilated remains were rescued by Mr. Adams, is an 

 old story, often told and retold. Suffice it to say that, 

 besides the bones, enough of the beast was preserved 

 to tell us exactly what was the covering of this ancient 

 elephant, and to show that it was a creature adapted to 

 withstand the northern cold and fitted for living on the 

 branches of the birch and hemlock. 



