it at night. The man knew little of the value of
his discovery, but the story went abroad, and an Englishman travelling
in Russia, being curious to verify it, visited the spot, and actually
found the remains where they had been reported to lie, on the frozen
shore of the Arctic Sea,--strange burial-place enough for an animal
never known to exist out of tropical climates. Little beside the
skeleton was left, though parts of the skin remained covered with hair,
showing how perfect must have been the condition of the body when first
exposed. The tusks had been sold by the fisherman; but Mr. Adams
succeeded in recovering them; and collecting all the bones except those
of one foot, which had been carried off by the wolves, he had them
removed to St. Petersburg, where the skeleton now stands in the Imperial
Museum. The inhabitants of Siberia seem to be familiar with this animal,
which they designate by the name of _Mammoth_, while naturalists call
it _Elephas primigenius_. The circumstance that they abound in the
frozen drift of the great northern plain of Asia, and are occasionally
exposed in consequence of the wearing of the large rivers traversing
Siberia, has led to the superstition among the Tongouses, that the
Mammoths live under ground, and die whenever, on coming to the surface,
the sunlight falls upon them.

[Illustration]

Had this been the only creature of the kind found so far from the
countries to which elephants are now exclusively confined, it might have
been believed that some strange accident had brought it to the spot
where it was buried. But it was not long before similar remains were
found in various parts of Europe,--in Russia, in Germany, in Spain, and
in Italy. The latter were readily accounted for by the theory that they
must be the remains of the Carthaginian elephants brought over by the
armies of Hannibal, while it was suggested that the others might have
been swept from India by some great flood, and stranded where they were
found. It was Cuvier, entitled by his intimate acquaintance with the
anatomy of living animals to an authoritative opinion in such matters,
who first dared to assert that these remains belonged to no elephant of
our period. He rested this belief upon structural evidence, and insisted
that an Indian elephant, brought upon the waves of a flood to Siberia,
would be an Indian elephant still, while all these remains differed in
structure from any species existing at present. This