Mammoth
an extinct elephant with enormous tusks much more curved than those of existing species. During a former and colder age this animal used to roam in herds over the plains of Siberia, feeding on the leaves of the spruce and fir tree. Bones of the mammoth have been found in North America from Bering Strait to South Carolina, and in Europe from the Arctic Ocean as far southward as Italy and the Pyrenees Mountains. Early in the nineteenth century a hunter discovered one embedded in the mouth of the Lena River in Siberia. He waited until the animal had become somewhat exposed by the melting of the ice. He then cut off its tusks which he sold for ivory. Although the animal must have been in the ice for centuries, it was perfectly well preserved. Bears, wolves, foxes, and other wild beasts fed on it until a Mr. Adams of the Academy of St. Petersburg, hearing of the remains, took steps to preserve what was left from destruction. He found the skeleton almost entire and a part of the skin on the side on which the animal had lain. Even the weight of this fragment of skin was so great that ten persons were required to carry it to his boat. The tusks were recovered, and the skeleton was mounted in the museum of the Academy at St. Petersburg. This skeleton, from the forepart of the skull to the insertion of the tail, measures sixteen feet four inches. Its height is nine feet four inches. The tusks measure nine feet six inches along the curve, and six feet seven inches in a straight line from the base to the point.
Mammoth tusks have been found in great quantities all over Siberia, and have formed an important article of commerce, furnishing the so-called fossil ivory. The mammoth lived in what is known as the stone age of man. Other animals of this age were the cave bear, the cave hyena, and the Irish deer.
There is a popular impression that the mammoth was an animal of enormous size. In all probability it was little if any larger than the African elephant. The Siberian peasants had never seen these animals on the surface of the earth, but they had seen their carcasses come up, apparently through the ice. They had a notion that the animals lived in the interior of the earth very comfortably, but that they died whenever they happened to approach the surface. These wild hunters, comparable to our American Indians, gave the animal the name of mammoth, meaning, in their language, a dweller underground. The idea of enormous size is one that white people have attached to the word.
As stated, the mammoth was not a tropical animal. It had a shaggy coat, warmer than that of a bear. It lived by cropping twigs of birch, alder, and other shrubs growing in sub-arctic climes.