proper homeland of this
animal, and there it must at one time have wandered about in large
herds.

The same, or a closely allied species of elephant, also occurred in
North America, in England, France, Switzerland, Germany, and North
Russia. Indeed, even in Sweden and Finland inconsiderable mammoth
remains have sometimes been found.[214] But while in Europe only some
more or less inconsiderable remains of bones are commonly to be found,
in Siberia we meet not only with whole skeletons, but also whole animals
frozen in the earth, with solidified blood, flesh, hide, and hair. Hence
we may draw the conclusion that the mammoth died out, speaking
geologically, not so very long ago. This is besides confirmed by a
remarkable antiquarian discovery made in France. Along with a number of
roughly worked flint flakes, pieces of ivory were found, on which, among
other things, a mammoth with trunk, tusks, and hair was engraved in
rough but unmistakable lineaments, and in a style resembling that which
distinguishes the Chukch drawings, copies of which will be found further
on in this work. This drawing, whose genuineness appears to be proved,
surpasses in age, perhaps a hundredfold, the oldest monuments that Egypt
has to show, and forms a remarkable proof that the mammoth, the original
of the drawing, lived in Western Europe contemporaneously with man. The
mammoth remains are thus derived from a gigantic animal form, living in
former times in nearly all the lands now civilized, and whose carcase is
not yet everywhere completely decomposed. Hence the great and intense
interest which attaches to all that concerns this wonderful animal.

If the interpretation of an obscure passage in Pliny be correct,
mammoth ivory has, from the most ancient times, formed a 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 detail 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 (WITSEN, 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