ighways, were beaten by it through the
jungle, along which it periodically travelled to the cool springs,
leisurely sauntering, and tarrying to munch the fleshy gourds and
cactuses that bordered its self-made track.

The plains of Siberia, stretching away towards the Arctic Ocean,
sheltered countless hosts of huge pachydermatous quadrupeds. A species
of Rhinoceros, not less bulky than those of the present age, roamed to
the very verge of the Icy Sea; its hide, tough and leathery, was
destitute of folds, but was clothed with tufts of rigid gray hair,--an
ornament which is denied to our existing degenerates. Two horns, the
front one of unusual massiveness and length, were seated, as in several
of the African kinds, one behind the other, and were wielded by a head
of great strength and development.

More remarkable still was that great hairy Elephant, called the
Mammoth, which appears to have swarmed in those cold plains by myriads.
Of equal dimensions to the Indian species of the present age, this
denizen of the north had far more enormous curving tusks, and instead of
the naked hide of those we are familiar with, his body was encased in
black hair, with a thick under stratum of red curled wool, and bore a
long mane on the ridge of the neck.

There was, at the same time, a quadruped, nearly allied to the
elephants, but differing from them in some technical characters. With a
body equally bulky, but considerably longer, it had shorter limbs, a
broader head, small tusks in the lower, as well as large curving ones in
the upper jaw, and probably a trunk intermediate between the elephant's
and the tapir's. Truly cosmopolite as this great Mastodon was, for we
dig up his bones from all parts of the world, he had his head-quarters
in North America, where, from his dimensions and his numbers, he must
have formed a very characteristic feature of the primeval swamps and
forests. There, with his tusks, he grubbed up the young trees, whose
juicy roots he ground down with his great mammillary molar teeth, or
chewed up to a pulp the sapwood of the recent branches and spicy twigs.
And ever and anon he would resort to the broad saline marshes,--the
"Licks," as they are now called,--to lick up the crystallised salt on
their margins, so grateful to all herbivorous quadrupeds. Here, in his
eagerness to gratify his palate with the pungent condiment, he would
press farther and farther into the treacherous quagmire, till he began
to sink, an