156 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



far less sum than it would cost to participate in an inter- 

 national yacht race. 



In the first edition of this book, just after the 

 above lines were written it was noted that another well 

 preserved example of the animal had been discovered in 

 Siberia and that an expedition was on the way to secure 

 it. It is painful to record that this expedition was only 

 partially successful. It naturally took time for the 

 report of the discovery to travel from Siberia to St. 

 Petersburg and for the dispatch of the party to secure it, 

 so that while the body was discovered in 1900, the work 

 of exhumation did not begin until September, 1901. 



Then too the official who was to have seen that the 

 body was covered during the winter in order to preserve 

 it from the attacks of wolves, was taken ill, so that the 

 carcass was left exposed. The result was that much of 

 the animal that might otherwise have been saved was 

 lost by decay and the attacks of wild animals, though 

 enough was left to add materially to our knowledge of 

 the animal and to permit of its restoration. 



This find threw much light on the problem of how the 

 Mammoths came to be imbedded in ice or frozen soil, 

 since the theory that this was due to some cataclysm 

 that caused an almost instantaneous change in climate 

 was long ago abandoned. Briefly, it is supposed to have 

 been brought about by the giving away of the earth, 

 precipitating the mammoth into a big crevasse formed 

 by the sliding away of the bank, undercut by the river 

 in flood. Some of the bones were broken, as if by a fall, 

 and the attitude of the animal indicated that it had 

 made desperate efforts to extricate itself from the trap 

 into which it had fallen and in this attitude the re- 

 stored animal has been mounted in the museum in 

 St. Petersburg. 1 



1 A full account of this find is given in the Report of the Smithsonian 

 t Institution for 1903. 



