H. H. Howorth—The Mammoth in Siberia. 411 
claws, and saw no reason to change their custom” (id. 382). 
These passages enable us to predicate that the existence of the great 
pachyderms in Siberia was known in Europe before the time of 
Herodotus. 
But to return to Harun-ar-Rashid. It is clear that the present 
he sent was that of a Narwhal’s tusk, and the horn of a fossil 
Rhinoceros. There can be little doubt the former as well as the 
latter came from Siberia, for although it is not mentioned among the 
animals killed in the seas about Nova Zembla, Schmidt, in his recent 
journey on the Yenissei, saw such a Narwhal’s tusk in the possession 
of a fur merchant named Satnikof at Dudmo, which had been 
detached and sent to him by a Samoyede. The presence of products 
of the Siberian tundras at Baghdad in the ninth century is surely a 
curious fact, of which we have other evidence. We are told by the 
early Arab geographers that Bolghari on the Volga was in the ninth 
and tenth centuries a famous mart of trade, and that there was an 
active traffic between it and Khuarezm or Khiva. They go on to 
say that in Bulgaria (used no doubt here as a general phrase) were 
often found fossil bones of an immense size. One traveller reports 
having seen a tooth two palms in width and four in length, and a 
skull resembling an Arab hut, and teeth like those of an elephant, 
white as snow, and weighing as much as 200 menns. These were 
transported to Khuarezm, and there sold at a great price. Out 
of them were made vases, and other objects, as was done from 
ivory (D’Ohsson, Abul Casim, 80). Samoyedes still carve out of 
Mammoths’ teeth articles for their sledges and drinking cups. The 
Yukagirs use slices of Rhinoceros horn to strengthen their bows 
with (Ermann, ii. 86, and 882), and in the Christy collection may 
be seen elaborate figures and domestic objects, carved out of Mam- 
moth ivory by the Yakuts. The Arabs, so far as we know, were 
the first people who developed this trade in fossil ivory, and we 
thus see how they should have given its recognized name to the 
Mammoth. Fossil ivory as a curiosity was doubtless known much 
earlier. Theophrastus, a contemporary of Alexander the Great, in 
a lost work on stones, as quoted by Pliny, mentioned ivory dug out 
of the ground. 
Having seen how early these Siberian deposits were known in 
Europe, it will not surprise us to learn that they were known also in 
early times in China. When Tilesius wrote his famous memoir on 
the Mammoth found by Adams, he was supplied by Klaproth with 
some curious information from Chinese sources. He says, when he 
was at Kiachtu on the Chinese frontier in 1806, he learnt from 
several Chinese that Mammoths’ bones were known to them, and 
were called Tien shu ya, Teeth of the Mouse, Tien shu. On turn- 
ing to a Manchu dictionary, he found the statement that the beast 
Fyn shu is only found in a cold region on the river Tutungian, and 
as far north as the frozen ocean. ‘The beast is like a mouse, but 
the size of an elephant. It shuns the light and lives in dark holes 
in the earth. Its bones are white like elephant ivory, are easily 
worked and have no fissures, and its flesh is of a cold nature and 
very wholesome.” 
