Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1879-03-01
The Mammoth.

Some time ago Professor Ward mr.
chased and placed in bis museum at
Rochester, N. Y. q great European
mammoth. In Q letter to the New York
Tribune, Professor Winchell describe 3
this mammoth. In reference to the
same, the editor says: In every essen.
tial particular this reconstructed ami
NAL is undoubtedly fair specimen of
the huge monsters which roamed
through the wilds Of Northern Europe
and Asia, and also in Alaska and along
the western slope of the Rocky Mount.
aims, as far south as the Columbia river.
while the human race was still in its
infancy. Even during the present cen.
fury the remains of these animals have
been found in Siberia, SO perfectly pre-
served by the ice that their flesh was
greedily devoured by the dogs of the
discover. DIR. Wards specimen has
been constructed from actual measure
ment OF the skeleton of Siberian nam
moth now in the Imperial Museum of
st. Petersburg, and the illustration we
give OF it will show its vast size and its
great resemblance to its lineal descend
ant, the modern elephant. In North
America. east of the Rocky Mountains,
the elephantine creature which -four
ished contemporaneously with the
mammoth is known as the mastodon.
More than hundred skeletons of this
animal have already been discovered,
although the interior of the continent
is comparatively unknown ground to
the antiquarian. There were many
points of likeness between them, but
the mastodon was the smaller of the
two. had shorter and slenderer tusks,
and was probably smooth skinned,
while the mammoth was apparently we'll
covered with shaggy hair.
Professor Winchell claims that in the
time of the mammoth the climate of
Northern Siberia was temperate, yield
ing an abundant vegetation, and espe-
cially sustaining immense forests on
which the mammoth mainly subsisted.
In this region their numbers were so
great that the tusks of mammoths now
occur in such quantities as to furnish
an important part of the ivory of COM
merce. How came these vast herds to
perish, and leave not single straggler
behind ? Professor Winchell attributes
their destruction to a sudden invasion
of Arctic weather. Some secular
change, he believes. produced an I'M
precedented precipitation of snow. uu-
der which, huddled together in the
sheltering valleys aud deep detiles of
the rivers, the mammoths persisted. 1t
was one of those sudden changes which
Mr.. Clarence King not long ago de-
scribed in his remarkable essay on Ca
tastrophism, and of which, as he showed
geology furnishes many examples. 1t
was probably in some similar catastro-
phe that the mastodon also became ex-
tinct.
How such catastrophes were pro-
duced, or whether they are still liable
to occur, is purely a matter of specula.
ton. A sudden change in the earth
orbit, or in the direction of the earth s
axis, would readily account for them /;
but it is extremely improbable that
such changes could ever have taken
place. In the variability of the sun we
may possibly find q more plausible So
luton of the difficulty, but even there
the variations are now so slight as to be
utterly inadequate to produce such
surprising results.