THE MAMMOTH. 47 



anterior ridge, is very short and irregular, being that por- 

 tion of the tooth which has been reduced by constant usage. 

 The teeth resemble those of the Asiatic elephant, but 

 are broader, longer, and heavier ; the same in number and 

 development, and constructed on the same anatomical 

 plan ; but, notwithstanding these resemblances, they differ 

 in some particulars. The teeth of the elephant contain 

 twenty plates, while that of the mammoth thirty. Hence 

 by the structure of their teeth they were able to employ 

 as food the branches and foliage of the northern pines, 

 birches, willows, etc. 



III. RANGE. 



The mammoth ranged over a large part of the earth's 

 surface, its remains having been found in North America 

 from Behring's Straits to the Gulf of Mexico, and in the 

 Old World from the eastern extremity of Siberia to the 

 extreme west of Europe, and as far south as Rome and the 

 Pyrenees. So abundant are these relics that there is 

 scarcely a cabinet that docs not contain them. Over two 

 thousand molar-teeth were dredged up on the coast of Nor- 

 folk alone, between 1820 and 1833, by the fishermen of the 

 little village of Happisburg, while trawling for oysters. 

 The islands in the sea north of Siberia are composed 

 of sand, ice, and the remains of the mammoth. Year 

 after year the waves disintegrate these masses and cast 

 on the shore large quantities of fossil tusks, and the rivers 

 in the north of Siberia, in the season when the thaw takes 

 place, sweep down portions of their banks and disengage 

 the bones buried in the soil. In the cliffs of frozen mud 

 in Escholtz Bay, Alaska, they occur in great numbers, and 

 at Big Bone Lick, in Kentucky, remains have been found 

 belonging to about twenty-five different individuals. The 

 ivory washed out in the rivers of the north is in a remark- 

 able state of preservation. Every summer the fishermen 

 of Siberia visit the islands of the Frozen Ocean and search 



