11 



mation there is always a tendency to make up for it by the exercise- 

 of the imagination. And so, never having seen the mysterious 

 creature to which these teeth belonged, they have legends of an 

 enormous animal which burrows in the earth like a mole, to which 

 the light of day is fatal, and which therefore invariably died when- 

 ex&r it chanced to emerge into the upper air. Hence these bones- 



But I have stated that the Mammoth has been seen in the flesh 

 in modern times, though not in a living condition. In these days 

 of American and Australian mutton we have little difficulty in 

 understanding how this may be. If a Mammoth once got frozen 

 up in ice, it would have to stay there till it thawed, however long a 

 time that might be ; and certainly the ice would preserve the body 

 from putrefaction. Several examples of bodies so preserved might 

 be given ; nine have been recorded ; but I will only select two. In 

 1800 an entire body was discovered at the mouth of one of the 

 Siberian rivers ; and a circumstantial account has been left by the 

 Russian naturalist Adams, of another found in 1806. But as the 

 particulars concerning this one are to be found in almost every 

 work on geology, I will read to you an account of the discovery of 

 a carcase found so late as 1846 by a Russian engineer, Lieutenant 

 Benkendorf. Doubt has been thrown upon this by Howorth, but 

 as it is accepted by Boyd Dawkins taken from Middendorf's Travels,, 

 and more recently still by Mr. Hutchinson in his book on "Extinct- 

 Monsters," I see no reason to regard it as untrustworthy.) 



So we are enabled to give a perfectly correct representation of 

 this Elephant of the early world ; and few museums are without 

 some of its remains. Undoubtedly the greatest interest of all in 

 connection with the Mammoth is that attaching to its associations 

 with our own early ancestors. In many a cave and river deposit 

 its remains have been found mixed with human bones and imple- 

 ments ; and the charred fragments on the hearth shows that they 

 used it for food. Now, notice the next slide on the screen. You 

 see a somewhat rude yet graphic sketch of a Mammoth apparently 

 scratched on some soft substance. You cannot mistake the draw- 

 ing for that of any other animal, not even for our own elephant. 

 It was found in 1863 in the cave of La Madelaine in the south of 

 France, and it is scratched on a piece of Mammoth tusk. It lay 

 in a medley of flint hatchets, bone needles, flint arrow heads, and 

 human bones; it was certainly drawn by a human hand, no less 

 certainly by Palaeolithic Man, i.e. by man almost as far back as we 

 have been able to trace his existence. He has in his sketch caught 

 the prominent characteristics of the huge beast — its curved tusks,, 

 its shaggy covering ; you cannot doubt that the man who drew it 

 had often seen it, and was in fact familiar with it. One wonders 

 whether he did it out of a pure love of drawing, or to while away 

 an idle hour ; or whether, as it has been suggested, it was done to-^ 



