MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS 



Slowly, through thousands of years, the elephants 

 developed from small creatures with short trunks 

 and tusks, into animals so powerful that, at last, 

 they were the monarchs of the entire world. Now 

 they live only in Africa and India, and any one 

 in other countries who wishes to see one of these 

 animals must go either to a circus or a zoolog- 

 ical garden. Yet, in all the places where elephants 

 are at present exhibited as curiosities, they once 

 made their homes. For they lived in nearly every 

 part of Asia and Africa and in Europe' and America. 

 There were many different kinds of them, but none 

 were exactly like the elephants of to-day. And 

 mightiest among them all were the Mammoths and 

 the Mastodons. 



When men first began to find the fossil bones of 

 elephants buried in the earth, they thought them the 

 bones of human beings. They therefore concluded 



MIGHTY ANIMALS — 8 113 



