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NATURAL HISTORY. 



(Ehphas primigenius). This Elephant has been found frozen in Siberian soil beautifully preserved, 

 with the hair and tissues in so good a condition that microscopical sections have been made of them. 



The story of finding the first Mammoth imbedded in ice has been often told, but is still of sufficient 

 interest to be related again. A Tungoosian fisherman, named Schumachoff, about the year 1799, was 

 proceeding, as is the custom of fishermen in those parts when fishing proves a failure, along the shores of 

 the Lena in quest of Mammoth tusks, which have been there found in considerable abundance. During 

 his rambles, having gone farther than he had done before, he suddenly came face to face with a huge 

 Mammoth imbedded in clear ice. This extraordinary sight seems to have filled him with astonishment 

 and awe ; for instead of at once profiting by the fortunate discovery, he allowed several years to roll on 

 before he summoned courage to approach it closely, although it was his habit to make stealthy journeys 

 occasionally to the object of his wonder. At length, seeing, it is presumed, the terrific monster made no 

 signs of eating him up, and that its tusks would bring him a considerable sum of money, he allowed 



SKELETON OF MAMMOTH. 



the hope of gain to overcome his superstitious scruples. He boldly broke the barrier of ice, chopped off 

 the tusks, and left the carcass to the mercy of the Wolves and Bears, who, finding it palatable, soon 

 reduced the huge creature to a skeleton. Some two years afterwards a man of science was on the 

 scent, and although so late in at the death, found a huge skeleton with three legs, the eyes still in the 

 orbits, and the brain uninjured in the skull. 



In addition to the peculiarity of the Mammoth having its body covered with long woolly hair, it 

 was also remarkable for the extraordinary formation of its enormous tusks, which curved upwards, 

 forming a spiral. 



The eminent Siberian explorer, Dr. Middendorf, in 1843, met with a second instance of the 

 Mammoth being preserved to such a degree that the bulb of the eye is now in the same museum as the 

 skeleton of a Mammoth found by Mr. Adams in 1803. Middendorf found it in latitude 66 30 N., 

 between the Obi and the Yenisei near the Arctic Circle. In the same year he also found a young 

 animal of the same species in beds of sand and gravel, at about fifteen feet above the level of the sea, 

 near the river Taimyr, in latitude 75 15', associated with marine shells of living Arctic species, as 

 well as with the trunk of the larch. But the fourth, and by far the most important, discovery of a 

 Mammoth is described by an eye-witness of its unearthing, and the record is so valuable in its bear- 

 ings that we give it at some length. A young Eussian engineer, Benkendorf by name, employed by 



