Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

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Mammoth

a gigantic prehistoric mammal. The first mammoth discovered shores of the Lena, by a Tungoosian fisherman named Schumachoff. was found imbedded in ice in 1799 on the W. Boyd Dawkins, treating of the range of the mammoth in time and space, comes to the conclusion that it existed in Great Britain before, during, and after the Glacial period. Its remains are found in France in "enormous abundance"; there it was contemporary with the Cavemen of the Pleistocene, as is proved by a " botteg hae 10 A MAMMOTH but erroneously called quadrupeds (fourfooted animals). They have red, warm blood, in this respect agreeing with birds, but differing from reptiles, amphibians and fishes. The mouth is concealed by lips and armed with bony and enameled teeth; each ramus of the mandible is composed of a simple piece of bone. The covering is of hair. Normally, there are four limbs, which in some aquatic members of the class are modified into fins. The toes are generally five. Most of the bones are solid or have cavities filled with marrow, the air cells which aid in imparting lightness to the bones of birds being, as a rule, absent. The bones of the cranium and of the face are immovably fixed to each other. The cranium is larger than in other vertebrates, the lower jaw consists of only two pieces.

The vertebral column may be divided into five regions, the cervical, the dorsal, the lumbar, the sacral, and the caudal vertebræ. The heart has two auricles and two ventricles. The respiration is by lungs. spirited engraving of it on a piece of mammoth ivory found in the Cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne; it has been found in nearly every county in England; and, broadly speaking, its range extended "over the whole land of the Northern Hemisphere."

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