THE MAMMOTH. 
2II 
reasoning. The molar teeth of the elephant show a highly com- 
plicated and peculiar structure, and there are no other quadrupeds 
that feed to such an extent on the woody fibre of the branches 
of trees. Many mammals, as we know, eat the leaves of trees ; 
some gnaw the bark ; but elephants alone tear down and crunch 
the branches. One would think there was but little nourishment 
to be got from such. But the hard vertical plates of their huge 
grinders enable them to pound up the tough vegetable tissue and 
render it more or less palatable. Of course, the foliage is the most 
tempting, but where foliage is scarce something more is required. 
Now, in the teeth of the Mammoth the same principle of 
construction is observed, only with greater complexity, for there 
are more of these grinding plates and a larger proportion of 
dense enamel. Hence the inference seems unmistakable that 
the extinct species fed more largely on woody fibre than does the 
elephant of to-day. Forests of hardy trees and shrubs still grow 
upon the frozen soil of Siberia, and skirt the banks of the Lena 
as far north as the sixtieth parallel of latitude. 
If the Mammoth flourished in temperate latitudes only, as 
formerly suggested, then its thick shaggy coat becomes super- 
fluous and meaningless; but if it lived in the region where its 
body has been found, then the argument from its teeth, and the 
fir-spikes found in its stomach, is confirmed by the nature of its 
skin, and all the old difficulties vanish. Professor Owen con- 
siders that we may safely infer that, if living at the present day, 
it would find a sufficient supply of food at all seasons of the year 
in the sixtieth parallel, and even higher. Perhaps they migrated 
north during the summer; and, judging from the present limits of 
arboreal vegetation, they may have been able to subsist even in 
latitude 70° north, for at the extreme points of Lapland pines 
attain a height of sixty feet.^ 
It is often no easy matter to form conclusions with regard to 
* Sir Henry Howorth, in his Marmnoth and the Flood, suggests another 
theory, and gives some valuable information. 
