•290 LIVING AND EXTINCT ELEPHANTS. 



bility was, like that of man, capable of adaptation to very 

 great differences of climate. In Siberia, he was ' enveloped 

 in a shaggy thick covering of fur, like the Musk Ox, impene- 

 trable to rain or cold.' 1 But we are not obliged to suppose 

 that in his southern habit he was thus clad. The dermal 

 appendages are very variable and adaptive, according to 

 climate. The fine silky fleece, from which the Cashmeer 

 shawls are wove, is abundantly developed at the roots of the 

 long hairs of the domestic goat in the plains of Tibet, at, 

 and upwards of, 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, where 

 a highly rarified atmosphere is combined with severe winter 

 cold. It grows also, on the Kiang, the Yak, Cervus Wallichii, 

 the Brown Bear of high elevations in the Himalayan, and on 

 the Mastiff Dog of Tibet. But it disappears entirely from 

 the same Goat, and from the Dog, in the valley of Cashmeer. 

 The short crisp wool of the Siberian Mammoth, which seems 

 to have been the most protective portion of his fur, may, in 

 like manner, have disappeared from the variety that lived in 

 the valley of the Tiber, while the bristles and long coarse 

 hair were more or less retained ; and it is in the highest 

 degree probable that the species presented varieties of ex- 

 ternal form, dependant on the nature of the dermal clothing, 

 far exceeding those which are seen in existing Elephants. 

 That the Siberian Mammoth migrated periodically, from the 

 more southern forests, towards the Polar Sea, during summer, 

 as his surviving cotemporaries the Musk Ox and Reindeer 

 now do, is also highly probable ; 2 but we have no grounds to 

 believe that the Mammoth of Southern Europe ever made 

 migrations to the north of the Alps. 



The same constitutional elasticity which enabled the 

 Mammoth to endure such a variety of climates, and to spread 

 over such a vast geographical area, necessarily extended to 

 his alimentary habits. I have already called attention to 

 the remarkable constancy in the specific characters of the 

 molar teeth, alike in the pre-glacial and post-glacial, in the 

 extreme northern and the extreme southern forms. Their 

 adaptation was not special to the vegetation merely of 

 Siberia, but general to that of every region over which the 

 species spread ; and up to the present time not a plausible 

 conjecture even has been offered as to the class of vegetable 

 matters which they most affected. The qiiestion of the food 

 of the species has not been, in the least, advanced since the 

 discovery by Adams of the ice-preserved carcass on the 

 banks of the Lena in 1803, or since the philosophic doubts 

 were expressed by Fleming on the subject in 1829. 3 Wher- 



1 Fleming. Edinb. New Phil. Journ. 1828, vol. vi. p. 285. 



2 Richardson. Polar Kegions, 1861, pp. 275 and 296. 

 8 Edinb. New Phil. Journ. 1829, vol. vi. p. 2S5. 



