Quadrupeds. 5 



and the teeth consequently exposed : the neck was furnished with a 

 long mane ; the skin was covered with long hair and a reddish wool ; 

 the portion of skin still remaining was so heavy, that ten men could 

 scarcely carry it : according to Mr. Adams, more than thirty pounds 

 w^eight of hair and wool was collected from the wet sand into which 

 it had been trodden by the white bears while devouring the flesh. — 

 Mr. Adams took the greatest pains in collecting what remained of this 

 unique specimen of an ancient creation, and procured the tusks from 

 Jakutsk. The Emperor of Russia purchased the skeleton, which is 

 now in the Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburgh. The height 

 of the creature is about 9 feet, and its extreme length to the tip of 

 the tail about 16 feet. Portions of the skin and hair were presented 

 to most of the continental museums, as well as to the College of Sur- 

 geons in London. 



The figure at the head of this article is confessedly ideal, but com- 

 bines the characters which the observations of naturalists seem to 

 have ascertained as being possessed by this extraordinary relic of an 

 antediluvian world. We are accustomed to the shells and even bones 

 of animals that lived in long-past ages ; we find them converted into 

 stone, and becoming part and parcel of the earth on which we tread ; 

 but here we have an animal, preserved in pristine freshness, handed 

 down to us by the intervention of frost, from a period too remote to 

 contemplate, and yet in that perfect state of preservation which ice 

 and amber have alone achieved. The mammoth seems a link con- 

 necting the past and the present worlds — a being whose body has 

 outlived its destination. All the arguments which have been used to 

 prove that the earth has undergone some great convulsion since this 

 huge animal was endowed with life, appear perfectly untenable. In 

 the first place, it is evident that its life became a sacrifice to a sud- 

 den snow-storm, by which it was overtaken, overwhelmed and suffo- 

 cated. The suddenness of the storm might have been accidental ; 

 the winter might have set in earlier, it might have been more severe 

 than usual : but the animal was well adapted for such winters ; its 

 long, warm and shaggy coat proclaim it a denizen of Arctic countries, 

 and is admirably adapted to exclude the severest cold : such a cloth- 

 ing would have been intolerable in tropical regions, where elephants 

 now abound. We learn from Bishop Heber, that in some of the 

 mountainous and colder districts of northern India, hairy elephants 

 still exist, thus showing that this clothing is provided as an especial 

 protection against the climate ; and at the same time leading to the 

 obvious conclusion, that the well-clad mammoth, like the polar bear 



