132 MAMMALIA. 



wool, in sucli abundance, that what remained of it could only be 

 carried with difficulty by ten men. Besides this, they collected 

 more than thirty pounds weight of long and short hair, that the 

 White Bears had buried in the damp ground after they had 

 dcToured its flesh. The remains of this animal, which came to 

 light when buried in the ice for probably many thousand years, 

 are preserved in the Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg. 



The Museum of Natural History at Paris possesses a piece of 

 the skin and some locks of hair, with some flocks of wool, belonging 

 to another Mammoth, which was found entire and in a perfect 

 state of preservation in the ice on the coasts of the Arctic Ocean. 



We have related these two facts, with all the necessary details, 

 in our work. The World he/ore the Deluge, to which we refer our 

 readers.* The onlj^ thing we want to establish here is, that the 

 discovery of the Mammoth, made on the shores of the Irtisch, 

 proves that this animal lived in the regions of the north, of which 

 the climate was then, perhaps, much warmer than it is now ; 

 and that it is perfectly distinct from the two species actually in 

 existence. 



To the Mammoth {Elephas primigenius) we must add among 

 the species of fossil Proboscidea the famous Mastodon of Ohio. 

 Whilst the Mammoth has its tusks excessively curved round, the 

 Mastodon has almost straight tusks ; the molar teeth differ also 

 in each of these species. The bony remains of the Mastodon are 

 found in the middle of America and in Central Europe. However, 

 the question of the true species to be admitted among the fossil 

 Elephants is still not well studied ; and it is very difficult to 

 understand the filiation between these species and the species of 

 our own time. There is even a school of naturalists which sees 

 no really characteristic difl'erence between the Mastodon, the 

 Mammoth, and the Elephant of the present day. 



Family of Ordinary Pachyt)erms. — The genera comprised in 

 this family are — the Hippopotamus, Bhinoceros, Hyrax, Tapir, 

 Wild Boar, Phacoeheres, and Peccari. 



Hippopotamus. — The Hippopotamus (Fig. 34) is an enormous 

 animal, of massive dimensions ; it sometimes attains to as much 

 as three metres and a-half in length by more than three metres in 

 * Chapman & Hall, London. 



