THE STORY OF THE ELEPHANTS 279 
brandies 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 vege- 
table tissue and render it more or less palatable. Of course, the 
foliage is the most tempting, but where foliage is scarce some- 
thing more is required. 
Row, 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. Sir Eichard Owen con- 
sidered 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 it 
migrated north during the summer ; and, judging from the 
present limits of arboreal vegetation, it 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.^ 
1 Sir Henry Howorth, in his Mammoth and the Flood, suggests another 
theory, and gives much valuable information. 
