Description of the Memains of a Mammoth . 281 
of a mammoth and an elephant, I shall content myself 
with relating here some characteristic marks which dis- 
tinguish the two species : I reserve for a particular me- 
moir some more detailed observations upon this subject. 
I shall here recapitulate the motives which induced me to 
adopt the opinion of M. Cuvier. 
1. If the writers whom I have mentioned have actual 
ly made, as I suppose, zootomical comparisons, they have 
been able to do so very incompletely, and upon detached 
pieces ; for neither the head, nor the whole vertebrae, nor 
the feet of the mammoth covered with flesh and hair, and 
furnished with the sole, have ever yet been examined, 
when collected together, by any writer. 
The presence of the coccyx, which finishes the verte- 
bral column, convinces me that the animal has had a very 
short and thick tail, like its feet : besides, its being every 
where covered with bristles induces me to think that they 
cannot be those of an ordinary elephant. 
2. The teeth of the mammoth are harder, heavier, and 
more twisted in a different direction than the teeth of an 
elephant. Ivory-turners, who have wrought upon these 
two substances, say that the mammoth’s horn, by its co- 
lour and inferior density, differs considerably from ivory, 
I have seen some of them which formed in their curva- 
ture three fourths of a circle ; and at Jakoutsk, another of 
the length of two toises and a half, and which were an 
archine thick near the root, and weighed seven pouds. 
It is to be remarked, that the point of the tusks on the ex- 
terior side is always more or less worn down : this enables 
the inhabitant of the Frozen Sea to distinguish the right 
from the left tusk. 
The mammoth is covered with a very thick hair through 
the w hole body, and has a long mane upon its neck. 
Even admitting that I doubted the stories of my travel- 
ling companions, it is nevertheless evident that the bris - 
