400 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
valued article of commerce, which, however, was often mistaken 
for the ivory of living elephants and of the walrus. But portions 
of the skeleton of the mammoth itself are first described in de¬ 
tail by WiTSEN, who during his stay in Russia in 1686 collected 
a large number of statements regarding it, and at least in the 
second edition of his work gives good drawings of the under jaw 
of a mammoth and the cranium of a fossil species of ox, whose 
bones are found along with the remains of the mammoth (Wit- 
sen, 2nd. edit. p. 746). But it appears to have escaped Witsen, 
who himself considered mammoth bones to be the remains of 
ancient elephants, and who well knew the walrus, that in a 
number of the accounts which he quotes, the mammoth and the 
walrus are clearly mixed up together, which is not so wonderful, 
as both are found on the coast of the Polar Sea, and both yielded 
ivory to the stocks of the Siberian merchants. In the same 
way all the statements which the French Jesuit, Aveil, during 
his stay in Moscow in 1686, collected regarding the amphibious 
animal, Behemoth, occurring on the coast of the Tartarian Sea, 
(Polar Sea) refer not to the mammoth, as some writers, 
Howoeth^ for example, have supposed, but to the walrus. 
The name mammoth, which is probably of Tartar origin, Witsen 
appears to wish to derive from Behemoth, spoken of in the 
fortieth chapter of the Book of Job. The first mammoth tusk 
was brought to England in 1611, by JosiAS Logan. It was 
purchased in the region of the Petchora, and attracted great 
attention, as appears from Logan’s remark in a letter to Hak¬ 
luyt, that one would not have dreamed to find such wares in the 
region of the Petchora {Purchas, iii, p. 546). As Englishmen 
at that time visited Moscow frequently, and for long periods, 
this remark appears to indicate that fossil ivory first became 
1 Compare Ph. Avril, Voyage en divers etats d''Europe et d'Asie entrepris 
pour decouvrir un nouveau cliemin d la Chine, etc., Paris, 1692, p. 209. 
Henry H. Howorth, “The Mammoth in Siberia^’ {Geolog. Mag. 1880, 
p. 408). 
