THE TIME OF THE MAMMOTHS. 151 
of the old world, the new world was inhabited by quite dif- 
ferent forms of pachyderms. The beds of the Mauvaises 
Terres, and neighboring country so astoundingly rich in ani- 
mal remains, have supplied us with more species of fossil 
horses than are known from all the rest of the beds of that 
period. Altogether the middle and later tertiaries of North 
America have supplied us with the remains of at least ten 
species of fossil horse-like animals; so that the compara- 
tively unexplored regions of North America have yielded 
more tertiary horses than all of every age and formation 
which have been found in other regions. 
When we come down to dates nearer to our own time, and 
only separated therefrom by the last ice period, we find evi- 
dences that the European elephantine life still continued, 
though the species had changed, there being no longer so 
eonsiderable a number of distinct forms as then existed. 
We are not yet quite certain whether the elephant remains 
of Siberia come down to us from a period anterior to the 
glaeial epoch, or whether they were stored away in that 
frozen soil during or since that time of extreme cold. All 
analogy with the remains found in other regions, lead us to 
conclude that these herds of elephants, whose remains are 
found in such abundance around the mouths of the great 
rivers of northern Asia which empty into the Arctic Ocean, 
are contemporaneous with those of the closely allied, if not 
identical, species found in the peat swamps and morasses of 
North America. The number of these fossil elephants which 
are to be found in northern Asia is as remarkable as the 
condition in which they have been preserved. The ivory 
which they have left strewn over this region has been for 
centuries an important article of commerce, a large portion 
of the Chinese supply being probably derived from this 
source. There can be no doubt that the elephant life of 
this region was once as abundant as that which now exists in 
the jungles of Ceylon, or the southern part of Africa. 
The peculiar cireumstanees under which many of the bod- 
