The times., 1901-06-23

| that they were the bones of elephants
which Hannibal brought from Africa. oc-
| casionally they were brought forward as
irrefutable evidence of the Deluge; but
usually they figured as the bones o.
saints. Did not the Church of Valencia
possess an elephant tooth which did duty
as that of st. Christopher. and. so late
| as 11Ss, was not a thigh bone figuring
as an arm bone of a saint, carried in
| procession through the streets in order
| to bring rain?
"out of Europe. eastward into Asia. the
( mammoth took his way, and having peo-
| pied that vast region, took advantage of
a land connection between Asia and North
| America, and walked over into Alaska, in
company with the forerunners of the BIZ
son (buffalo) and the ancestors OF the
mountain sheep and Alaskan brown bear.
Still eastward and southwark he went,
until he came to the Atlantic coast
In regions like parts of Siberia and
| Alaska, where the bones are entombed IN
| wet. cold, and often icy, soil, the bones
and tusks are almost as perfectly pre-
served as if they had been deposited
but score of years ago, while remains
so situated that they have been subjected
to varying conditions of moisture ard
dryness are always in fragmentary
state.
While no entire animal has so far been
found in Alaska, some day ore may yet
come to light. That there is some posi-
bility of this is shown by the discovery of
the partial skeleton of a mammoth in the
bank of the Yukon with some OF the fat
still present. and although this had been
partially converted into adipocere "a con-
dition into which fat will get when acted
nv rra frac rOb fo T,a.
used by the natives for greasing their
boats
AS to why the mammoth became ex-
tinet. we know absolutely nothing, al
though various thecries some much more
ingenious than plausible, have been ad-
vanced to account for their eXtermina-
ton: they have perished frcm starva-
tion; they were overtaken by floods on
their supposed migrations and drowned
in detachments; they fell through the ice.
equally in detachments, and were swept
out to sea But all we can safely say is
that long ages ago they we're swept of the
face of the earth. Strange it is, too, that
these mighty beasts, whose bulk was am
pie to protect them against four-footed
foes, and whose wooIly coat was proof
against cold, should have utterly perished.
They ranged from England eastward to
New York, almost around the world, from
the Alps to the Arctic Ocean; and in such
numbers that today their tusks are arti-
Giles of commerce, and fossil ivory has its
price. current as well as wheat That
many were swept out to sea by the flooded
rivers of Siberia is certain, for some of the
low islands off the coast are said 10 be
formed of sand, ice. and bones of the
mammoth, and thence, for hundreds of
Id
in the market beside those of the African
and Indian elephant
THAT any living mammoth has for
centuries been seen on the Alaskan tun-
dras is utterly improbable, and on Mr.. c.
H Townsend seems TO rest the response
bility of having, though quite unintention-
ally, introduced the live Alaskan mann
moth into the columns of the daily press.
1t befell in this wise: Among the varied
duties of our revenue marine is that of
patrolling and exploring the shores of
arctic Alaska and the waters of the ad-
joining sea, and it is not so many years
ago that the cutter Corwin, If memory
serves Alright, held the record of furthest
north on the Pacific side. on one of these
northern trips TO the Kotzebue Sound re-
gion, famous for the abundanceof its de-
posits of mammoth bones, the Corwin car
ried Mr.. Townsend, then Naturalist to the
United States Fish Commission. AT Cape
Prince of Wales some natives came on
board bringing a few bones and tusks of
the mammoth, and upon being questioned
as to whether or not any of the animals
to which they pertained were living
promptly replied that all were dead, en-
quiring in turn If the white men had ever
seen any, and if they knew how these
animals, so vastly larger than a reindeer,
looked.
Fortunately. or unfortunately, there
was on board textbook on geology con-
tanning the wen-known cut of the St
Petersburg mammoth, and this was
brought forth, greatly to the edification
of the natives, who were delighted at rec
ognizing the carved tusks and the bones
they knew so well. Next the natives wish
ed to know what the outside of the crea-
ture looked like, and as Mr.. Townsend
had been at Ward S establishment at
Rochester, n. Y, where the first copy of
the Stuttgart restoration was made, he
rose to the emergency and made a sketch
This was taken ashore. together with
copy of the cut of the skeleton that was
laboriously made by an Iuunit sprawled
out at full length on the deck. Now, the
gadabouts. making long sledge journeys
in winter and long trips by boat in sum
mer, while each season they hold regu-
lar fair at Kotzebue Sound, where a thou
sand or two natives gather to barter and
gossip. On these journeys and at these
gatherings the sketches were no doubt
passed about copied and recopied, until
a large number of Iuunits had become
well acquainted with the appearance of
the mammoth. a knowledge that naturally
they were well pleased to display 10 any
white visitors. Also. like the Celt, the
Alaskan native delights to give soft
answer and is always ready to furnish
the kind of information desired.
Thus in due time the newspaper man
learned that the Alaskans could make
pictures of the mammoth, and that they
had some knowledge of it's size and hab-
its. So with inference and logic quite as
good as that of the Tungusian peasant.
somewhere in the frozen wilderness the
last survivor of the mammoths must still
be at large. And so, starting on the Pa
cific Coast, the live mammoth story wan
dered from paper to paper, until ii had
spread throughout the lengt% and breadth
of the United States, when it was cap
tured by MIR. Tukeman.
And now, once for all, it may be said
that there is no mounted mammoth to
awe the visitor to the National collec-
tions, and yet there seems no good and
conclusive reason why there should not
be. True, there are no live mammOthS
to be had at any price, neither are their
is good reason to believe that Il much
smaller sum than that said to have been