THE MAMMOTH 149 



The exact birthplace of the mammoth is as uncertain 

 as that of many other great characters ; but his earliest 

 known resting-place is in the Cromer Forest Beds of 

 England, a country inhabited by him at a time when the 

 German Ocean was dry land and Great Britain part of 

 a peninsula. Here his remains are found today, while 

 from the depths of the North Sea the hardy trawlers 

 have dredged hundreds, aye thousands, of mammoth 

 teeth in company with soles and turbot. If, then, the 

 mammoth originated in western Europe, and not in that 

 great graveyard of fossil elephants, northern India, east- 

 ward he went spreading over all Europe north of the 

 Pyrenees and Alps, save only Scandinavia, whose 

 glaciers offered no attractions, scattering his bones 

 abundantly by the wayside to serve as marvels for 

 future ages. Strange indeed have been some of the 

 tales to which these and other elephantine remains 

 have given rise when they came to light in the good old 

 days when knowledge of anatomy was small and 

 credulity was great. The least absurd theory concern- 

 ing them was that they were the bones of the elephants 

 which Hannibal brought from Africa. Occasionally 

 they were brought forward as irrefutable evidences of 

 the deluge; but usually they figured as the bones of 

 giants, the most famous of them being known as Teuto- 

 bochus, King of the Cimbri, a lusty warrior said to have 

 had a height of nineteen feet. Somewhat smaller, but 

 still of respectable height, fourteen feet, was "Littell 

 Johne" of Scotland, whereof Hector Boece wrote, con- 

 cluding, in a moralizing tone, "Be quilk (which) it 

 appears how extravegant and squaire pepill grew in 

 oure regioun afore they were effeminat with lust and 

 intemperance of mouth." More than this, these bones 

 have been venerated in Greece and Rome as the remains 

 of pagan heroes, and later on worshipped as relics of 



