152 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



oily secretion to repel water and when exposed to rain 

 or melting snow the wool became water-soaked, ofttimes 

 frozen, so that after all the mammoth perished from 

 cold. This sounds well, but fails to account for the dis- 

 appearance of such southern species as the Imperial 

 and Columbian mammoths which went the way of 

 their northern relative. 



Mammoths ranged from England eastward to New 

 York, almost around the world; from the Alps to the 

 Arctic Ocean; and in such numbers that to-day their 

 tusks are articles of commerce, and fossil ivory has its 

 price current as well as wheat. Mr. Boyd Dawkins 

 thinks that the mammoth was actually exterminated 

 by early man, but, even granting that this might be 

 true for southern and western Europe, it could not be 

 true of the herds that inhabited the wastes of Siberia, 

 or of the thousands that flourished in Alaska and 

 the western United States. So far as man is concerned, 

 the mammoth might still be living in these localities, 

 where, before the discovery of gold drew thousands 

 of miners to Alaska, there were great stretches of 

 wilderness wholly untrodden by the foot of man. 

 Neither could this theory account for the disappearance 

 of the mastodon from North America, where that 

 animal covered so vast a stretch of territory that man, 

 unaided by nature, could have made little impression 

 on its numbers. That many were swept out to sea by 

 the flooded rivers of Siberia is certain, for some of the 

 low islands off the coast are said to be formed of sand, 

 ice, and bones of the mammoth, and thence, for hun- 

 dreds of years, have come the tusks which are sold in the 

 market beside those of the African and Indian elephants. 



That man was contemporary with the mammoth in 

 southern Europe is fairly certain, for not only are the 

 remains of the mammoth and man's flint weapons found 



