126 MIGHTY ANIMALS 



unearthed thousands of years later, some of this 

 grass was still in his mouth ! During a hundred 

 centuries or more he had stayed in exactly the 

 position in which he died. This position showed 

 that he had strained every muscle in his body in 

 an attempt to work his way up over the edge of 

 the crevice. But he had burst a blood vessel in the 

 effort and that was the end of him. After his death, 

 the earth and ice caved in on him, then froze. In 

 this way the air was kept from his body so that it 

 remained without change for thousands of years. 



When this creature was alive, Siberia was probably 

 covered with fir trees and hardy bushes. It could 

 not have been as icy a country as it is to-day, for the 

 elephants lived there in large numbers. Thousands 

 of their fossilized tusks have been found, and many 

 of them have been sold to manufacturers who have 

 made them into ornaments or billiard balls. And 

 those who use the ornaments or play with the bil- 

 liard balls do not know that they are handling ivory 

 that once was part of an elephant which lived in 

 Siberia long before there were any people in the world. 



But, after all, one of the most wonderful things 



