290 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



God only knows what causes had worked for its preservation ; now, however, the stream had once 

 more brought it to the light of day, and I, an ephemera of life compared with this primeval giant, was 

 sent here by heaven just at the right time to welcome him. You can imagine how I jumped for joy. 



Picture to yourself an Elephant with a body covered with thick fur, about 



thirteen feet in height, and fifteen in length, with tusks eight feet long, thick and curving outwards 

 at their ends, a stout trunk of six feet in length, colossal limbs of one foot and a half in thickness, and 

 a tail naked up to the end, which was covered with thick tufty hair. The animal was fat and well 

 grown ; death had overtaken him in the fulness of his powers. His parchment-like, large, naked ears 

 lay fearfully turned up over the head ; about the shoulders and the back he had stiff hair, about a foot 

 in length, like a mane. The long outer hair was deep brown and coarsely rooted. The top of the head 

 looked so wild, and was so penetrated with pitch, that it resembled the rind of an old oak-tree. On 

 the sides it was cleaner, and under the outer hair there appeared everywhere a wool, very soft, 

 warm, and thick, and of a yellow brown colour. The giant was well protected against the cold. The 

 whole appearance of the animal was fearfully wild and strange. It had not the shape of our present 

 Elephants. As compared with our Indian Elephants, its head was rough, the brain case low and 

 narrow, but the trunk and mouth were much larger. The teeth were very powerful. Our Elephant 

 is an awkward animal, but compared with this Mammoth it is as an Arabian steed to a coarse ugly 

 Dray-horse. I could not divest myself of a feeling of fear as I approached the head ; the broken, 

 widely-opened eyes gave the animal an appearance of life, as though it might move in a moment and 

 destroy us with a roar. .;.... The bad smell of the body warned us that it was time to 

 save of it what we could, and the swelling flood, too, bade us hasten. First of all we cut oft' the 

 tusks, and sent them to the cutter. Then the people tried to hew the head off, but, notwithstanding 

 their good will, this was slow work. As the belly of the animal was cut open the intestines rolled 

 out, and then the smell was so dreadful that I could not overcome my nauseousness, and was obliged 

 to turn away. But I had the stomach separated and brought on one side. It was well filled, and 

 the contents instructive and well preserved. The principal were young shoots of the fir and pine ; a 

 quantity of young fir cones also, in a chewed state, were mixed with the mass." 



This most graphic account affords a key for the solution of several problems hitherto unknown. 

 It is clear that the animal must have been buried where it died, and that it was not transported from 

 any place farther up stream to the south, where the climate is comparatively temperate. The presence 

 of fir-spikes in the stomach proves that it fed on the vegetation which is now found at the northern 

 part of the woods, as they join the low, desolate, treeless, moss-covered tundra, in which the body lay 

 buried, a fact that would necessarily involve the conclusion that the climate of Siberia, in those 

 ancient days, differed but slightly from that of the present time. Before this discovery, the food of 

 the Mammoth had not been known by direct evidence. The circumstances under which it was brought 

 to light enable us to see how animal remains could be entombed in the frozen soil without undergoing 

 decomposition, which Baron Cuvier and Dr. Buckland agreed in accounting for by a sudden cataclysm, 

 and Sir Charles Lyell by the hypothesis of their having been swept down by floods from the temperate 

 into the arctic zone. In this particular case, the marsh must have been sufficiently soft to admit of 

 the Mammoth sinking in ; while shortly after death the temperature must have been lowered, so as 

 to arrest decomposition, up to the very day on which the body arose under the eyes of M. Benkendorf, 

 in the exceptionally warm year of 1846, when the tundra was thawed to a most unusual depth, and 

 converted into a morass permeable by water. Had any Mammoths been alive in that year, and had 

 they strayed beyond the limits of the woods into the tundra, some would in all human probability 

 have been engulfed ; and, when once covered up, the normal cold of winter would suffice to prevent 

 the thaw of the carcases, except in extraordinary seasons, such as that in which this one was discovered. 

 Probably many such warm summers intervened since its death, but as it was preserved from the air, 

 they would not accelerate putrefaction to any great degree. In this way the problem of its entomb- 

 ment and preservation may be solved by an appeal to the present climatal conditions of Siberia. The 

 difficulty of accounting for such vast quantities of remains in the Arctic Ocean, especially in the 

 Lackhow Islands off the mouth of the Lena, is also explained by this discovery, as well as the asso- 

 ciation of marine shells with the remains of the Mammoth. The body was swept away by the swollen 

 flood of the Indighirka, along with many other waifs and strays, and no doubt by this time is adding 



