No. 505] SHORTER ARTICLES AND CORRESPONDENCE 49 



coloring. In the time of the flood Noah had to take besides the 

 other animals a pair of mammoths. But when one of them put 

 his fore legs on the raft he almost turned it over. Noah became 

 terrified and quickly pushed his raft away from the monster. 

 Thus all the mammoths perished. 



Among the Chuckchee the mammoth is believed to be the 

 reindeer of evil spirits. He lives underground and moves about 

 through narrow passages. When a man sees a mammoth tusk 

 protruding from the ground he must dig it up; otherwise the 

 tusk will sink back into the ground. Once, it is said, some Chuk- 

 chee found two mammoth's tusks protruding from the earth. 

 They performed incantations and the mammoth came into sight. 

 They lived on the mammoth for a whole winter. 



A similar belief I found among the Tungus. On my way 

 from the Okhotsk Sea to the Kolyma District over the Stanovoi 

 Mountains I once spent a night on the banks of the lake 

 "Kememnan" or the "Mammoth's Lake." Concerning the 

 origin of this name I was told that some time ago a family of 

 wandering Tungus encamped beside the lake. When they arose 

 in the morning they saw two pair of mammoth tusks appearing 

 from under the ice. The Tungus fled on their reindeer horror- 

 stricken, from the lake, but they all died except one small boy in 

 their next encampment. 



It is interesting to note that in the languages of the above-men- 

 tioned tribes the mammoth ivory is called "mammoth horn" 

 (e. g., the Yukaghir call it "xolhut-onmun," i. e., horn or antler 

 of the mammoth), and not tusk or tooth, as if the people of 

 to-day have no proper conception of the appearance of the mam- 

 moth. On the other hand, the natives know that the Siberian 

 mammoth had a thick hairy tail and the "horns" grew from the 

 mouth. 



The export of mammoth-ivory from Siberia is still considerable. 

 From the northern part of the Yakutsk Province alone (in 

 greater part from the New Siberia Islands) the Moscow market 

 receives 1800 pud (i. e., 64,800 English pounds) every year. 

 The weight of a pair of tusks is from 200 to 500 pounds, with an 

 average of 360 pounds. Hence the yearly exportation of ivory 

 of the Yakutsk Province is equal to the tusks of 152 mammoths. 

 When we take into consideration the period of 200 years since 

 the exportation began we find that tusks of 25,400 mammoths 

 were sent out of the Yakutsk Province. It must be added that 



