Natural Hlftory of the Ancients. 89 



and the bones of M. giganteus^ from the United 

 States, may be feen fet up at the Britim Mufeum. 

 This creature is 20 feet 2 inches long, and 9 feet 

 6f inches high. Dr. Falconer difcovered the re- 

 mains of feveral fpecies alfo in the Sewalik Hills, 

 Eaft India. There, too, he found bones belonging 

 to fix fpecies of true elephant. Reverting to the 

 mammoth, there is no need to dwell upon the dif- 

 covery of the carcafe of one almoft wholly pre- 

 ferved, flefh, {kin, and hair, in 1799 on *ke banks 

 of Lake Onkoul in Siberia. The mammoth was 

 very widely diftributed over the globe, being a 

 pre-glacial as well as a poft-glacial inhabitant of 

 Great Britain. Numerous remains of it have been 

 found in Norfolk and Suffolk, and dredged out of 

 the German Ocean. It was the lateft form of the 

 extinct elephants. Its tulks have for ages in their 

 foffil ftate fupplied almoft all the ivory that Ruflia 

 ufes. Another inftance occurred in 1846 of a 

 frozen mammoth being thawed out of the ice, 

 but it could not be prefer ved. Lieutenant Ben- 

 kendorf and a party of CofTacks, in that year dif- 

 covered it on the banks of the Indighirka, ftanding 

 upright in the ice-bound tundra in the place where 

 it had been bogged, and narrowly efcaped being 

 themfelves fwept out into the Arctic Sea, as the 

 thaw proceeded, together with the mammoth, 

 which actually was fo loft. Several points in the 

 hiftory of the mammoth fhow that it probably 

 was the anceftor, geologically fpeaking, of the 

 prefent Indian elephant. The oldeft carving 

 known, found in the Madelaine Cave, in the 



