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EXTINCT MONSTERS 
elephants have, on account of their great size (and partly from 
a certain resemblance, in some, to bones of the human skeleton), 
been regarded as testifying to the former existence of giants, 
heroes, and demigods. To the present day the Hindoos consider 
such remains as belonging to the Rahshas, or Titans, — beings that 
figure largely in their ancient writings. Theophrastus, of Lesbos, 
a pupil of Aristotle, appears to have been the first to record the 
discovery of fossil ivory and bones. These were probably obtained 
by the country people from certain deposits in the neighbourhood, 
and are mentioned five hundred years later by Pausanias. Several 
Greek legends and traditions appear to be founded on such 
discoveries. 
We will now put before the reader the true accounts given by 
Adams.^ 
In 1799 a Tungusian, named Schumachoff, who generally 
went to hunt and fish at the peninsula of Tamut after the 
fishing season of the Lena was over, had constructed for his 
wife some cabins on the banks of the lake Oncoul, and had 
embarked to seek along the coasts for Mammoth tusks. One 
day he saw among the blocks of ice a shapeless mass, but did 
not then discover what it was. In 1800 he perceived that this 
object was more disengaged from the ice, and that it had two 
projecting parts ; and towards the end of the summer of 1801 
the entire side of the animal and one of his tusks were quite 
free from ice. In 1803 the enormous mass fell by its own 
weight on a bank of sand. It was a frozen Mammoth ! In 1804 
Schumachoff came to his Mammoth, and having cut off the 
tusks, exchanged them with a merchant for goods. Two years 
afterwards Mr. Adams, the narrator of the story, traversed these 
1 Abridged from Memoirs of the Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. 
Petersburg, vol. v. London, 1819. 
