S732 The Zoologist — October, 1873. 



the alarms that had made the past night so terrible. He re-crossed the 

 meadow, and followed the edge of the slope around in the direction in which 

 he saw some rocks. Among them he found the wide and lofty entrance to 

 a cave. He entered with some precautions, for the rocky pavement was 

 worn as if by use, and within he heard a slow, measured movement as of an 

 animal gently ruminating, and heavily breathing with great calm inspirations 

 and expirations like the sigh of a smith's bellows. One turn, then another, 

 he heard a heavy startling snort, and there in the half light of the cave, 

 standing full before him, alive, chewing the cud, and waving its proboscis 

 to and fro with a slow, gentle, majestic motion, lie saw — a mammoth ! 'I 

 did not know then,' said Cheritou, ' what T have since been told, that 

 Siberia was an old habitat of these animals, and that some of the best scien- 

 tific judges are uncertain whether to look upon the remains found on the 

 shores of the Arctic Ocean as fossil animals or as the remnants of wandering 

 herds caught and perishing in storms, individuals of which may still exist 

 under favourable circumstances. Without intending it I have solved that 

 doubt.' Cheritou describes the mammoth as being a very imposing looking 

 animal, covered with reddish brown wool and long black hair. During his 

 stay in the valley he was close to five of them, all of which were nearly of a 

 size, being about twelve feet high, eighteen feet long, with tusks projecting 

 about four feet, and being eight to ten feet counting the curve. The skin, 

 which was bare on the upper surface of the ears, on the knees, and rump, 

 was of a mouse-colour, and seemed very thick. The animal was nocturnal 

 in its habits, frequenting caves or forest depths by day, and feeding at night 

 and early morning. Cheritou thinks there miglit be some fifteen or twenty 

 of these monsters in the valley altogether, but that all these are aged, and 

 that very few are born now-a-days. At any rate he saw none that had the 

 least appearance of being young. They were very peaceable animals, torpid 

 and sluggish as old oxen, never disturbing Cheritou, nor indeed taking 

 much notice of him. * ■■• * The lake was inhabited by a monster of 

 which Cheriton was in constant dread, a sort of saurophidian, which he 

 described as being thirty feet long, and armed with scales and horrible fangs. 

 This monster — he never saw but the one — was master of the lake, and lived 

 by devouring the animals which came by night to its brink to drink. 

 Cheriton gives a graphic and exciting description of a contest which he 

 witnessed one morning at early dawn between this crocodile-serpent and 

 one of the mastodons. The battle, which lasted moi-e than an hour, ended 

 in the discomfiture of the mammoth, which could barely limp away after 

 having been constricted in the serpent's folds." 



[Although fully aware of the advantages of what the late Thomas Moore 

 called a " heliacal rising," I postponed the publication of this extraordinary 

 narrative for a mouth for two reasons : first, because ray notice of Mr. Mog- 

 gridge's volume had already been deferred for an unreasonable time ; and 



