New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1914-12-13
A MAMMOTH eEGINNG 70 COME TO LIGHT THROUGH THE
FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS TuSk Is SEEN PPoJEcTMG FPoM
A RECENT LANDSLIDE.

young mammoths, the tusks had only slight
ly more curved tilt than those of the modern
Asiatic elephant.
These tusks naturally varied a good deal
in size and weight according to the owners
age at death. A length of nine to twelve feet
along the outer curve was nothing unusual.
Such tusk often measures about two and
cne-half feet around the base and weighs l60
or 200 pounds The general run of equatorial
African elephant tusks coming to market now
adays turn the scale at about forty or fifty
pounds; so you see the mammoth was pretty
heavily worried
good many wise men have lost them.
selves in slough Of puzzement over wonder
ing why this huge prehistoric elephant was
blessed with this ostentstious dental array.
What could he have done with them?
Another of your illusions must be shattered
right here The mammoth didn't chase our
ancestors and eat EN-. He led blameless
life-never injured a lamb. Mammoths fed
on leafy branches of trees, pine and hr and
willow, any succulent mouthful Of arboreal
greenery he happened across He ate wild
flowers too. When he felt hungry he numbered
along, culling punches of posies Like Nebu-
chadnezzar, he ate grass, Like barbarian, he
ate wild thyme Like the young men who got
out "The Yellow Book" he ate poppies He
ate-oh, sublime bathos!-pretty yellow but
tercups. Seeds or other recognizable parts OF
them have been found in the crevices Of his
teeth and in his refrigerated tunmy.
INTO THE FOG; THEORIES THICKEN
AND PALEONTOLOGISTS MULTIPLY.
The Indian and African elephants OF to-day
often kneel and dig up young trees and bushes
with their straight sharp tusks which are
admirably adapted to the practice. And they
dig for water in the sand of sun-dred water
courses The nammoth's spiral tusks were
useless for such unitarian exercise. More
over, il seems very probable that for some
thousands Of years-tens of thousands, per-
haps-toward the end of his era, the man.
moth came south to the shelter OF the forests
for eight months in the year. In the matted
northern junges and thickets Of the worlds
northerly forest zone his enormous tusks
must have been the acme of nuisance. In
brief, no plausible theory has been advanced
for his tusks. They appear to have been a
case of sheer art for arts sake.
What sort of a world, you ask, was Mother
Earth in the mammoth's day, who were his
playmates, where did he live2
Now the fog is liable to thicken.
Mammoth is "a loose term-a corruption OF
French corruption Of Russian corruption
Of Siberian Tartar word, ''rnama"-that can
be, and is, applied to several forms of prehis-
torc elephant. There IS the huge Imperial
mammoth, whose American stamping ground
was from Nebraska south to the City of Mex
leo. There was the Columbian mammoth,
whose remains are found from the latitude OF
Washington, d. c., TO Mexico There is the
South mammoth, who haunted the south OF
Europe There is a mammoth whose bones
are found in the Sivalik Hills, in the NORTH OF
British India. And nearly every paleontolo-
gist who takes himself seriously adopts some
mammoth find or other and AYERS, in the face
OF ridicule, scorn and obloquy, that Elephas
Bill or E. Petey or Z. 81 was a separate spe-
cies an exclusive kinder ouss who had moth
ing 10 do with the others, and proved that
so-and-so and so-and-so was so-and-so. and
not, on any account, so-and-so.
ON THE TRAIL OF THE SIBERIAN
MAMMOTH, LAST OF HIS RACE.
However we are not going to consider here
all the tribe of mongrel and disputed mann
mothdom.
Let il be understood that our term man,
moth applies 10 the Siberian or Hairy Nam
moth, Elephls primigenius probably last OF
his race and the only mammoth found nova
days in the flesh. All that remains OF the
other mammoths is rare finds OF bones and