132 
MAMMALIA. 
wool, in such abundance, that wbat remained of it could only be 
carried witb difficulty by ten men. Besides tbis, tbey collected 
more than thirty pounds weight of long and short hair, that the 
White Bears had buried in the damp ground after they had 
devoured its flesh. The remains of this animal, which came to 
light when buried in the ice for probably many thousand years, 
are preserved in the Museum of the Academy of St. Petersburg. j 
The Museum of Natural History at Paris possesses a piece of 
the skin and some locks of hair, with some flocks of wool, belonging 
to another Mammoth, which was found entire and in a perfect ;j 
state of preservation in the ice on the coasts of the Arctic Ocean. 
We have related these two facts, with all the necessary details, | 
in our work, The World before the Deluge , to which we refer our 
readers.* The only thing we want to establish here is, that the 
discovery of the Mammoth, made on the shores of the Irtisch, || 
proves that this animal lived in the regions of the north, of which 
the climate was then, perhaps, much warmer than it is now; i 
and that it is perfectly distinct from the two species actually in 
existence. 
To the Mammoth ( Elephas primigenius) we must add among 
the species of fossil Proboscidea the famous Mastodon of Ohio. 
Whilst the Mammoth has its tusks excessively curved round, the 
Mastodon has almost straight tusks ; the molar teeth differ also 
in each of these species. The bony remains of the Mastodon are 
found in the middle of America and in Central Europe. However, 
the question of the true species to be admitted among the fossil 
Elephants is still not well studied; and it is very difficult to 
understand the filiation between these species and the species of 
our own time. There is even a school of naturalists which sees 
no really characteristic difference between the Mastodon, the 
Mammoth, and the Elephant of the present day. 
Family of Ordinary Pachyderms. — The genera comprised in 
this family are — the Hippopotamus , Rhinoceros , Hyrax , Tapir , 
Wild Boar, Phacocheres, and Peccari. 
Hippopotamus. — The Hippopotamus (Fig. 34) is an enormous 
animal, of massive dimensions ; it sometimes attains to as much 
as three metres and a-half in length by more than three metres in 
* Chapman & Hall, London. 
