Fig. 52.—Skeleton of Mammoth, Elephas primigenius (partly restored), in the Museum at Brussels. Drawn from a photograph, by J. Smit.
The skeleton of this specimen, the fame of which may be said to have spread all over the world, is now set up in the Museum of the St. Petersburg Academy, and the skin still remains attached to the head and feet. A part of the skin and some of the hair were sent by Mr. Adams to Sir Joseph Banks, who presented them to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.[62] A photograph of the skeleton as it now stands, may be seen on the wall of the big Geological Gallery at South Kensington (No. I. on plan), near the specimens of Mammoth tusks. But it should be pointed out that the tusks are put on the wrong way; for they curve outwards instead of inwards, thus presenting a somewhat grotesque appearance. For this reason we have not reproduced the familiar woodcut based on an engraving in the memoir already referred to.[63] But we give, instead, a sketch taken from a photograph (also on the wall in gallery No. I.) of a fine skeleton in the Brussels Museum ([Fig. 52]). Here the tusks are seen correctly inserted. We must also draw the reader’s attention to the remarkably fine specimen (glazed case E on plan) consisting of the skull and both tusks complete, found at Ilford in Essex.
[62] A specimen of the hair of a mammoth may be also seen at the Natural History Museum (pier case 31) in a tall glass jar. It came from frozen soil, Behring Strait. By the side of this will be seen, in a glass box, a portion of the skin of a mammoth, from the banks of the river Alaseja, Province of Yakutsk, Siberia. It exhibits the under fur, the long hair having entirely disappeared.
[63] Fig. 32 in Part I. of the Guide to the Exhibition Galleries in the Department of Geology and Palæontology in the British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road. (Price 1s.) This most useful guide should be consulted by the reader.
Adams’s specimen was, Dr. Woodward thinks, an old individual, and its tusks had curved upwards so much as to be of little use. In younger ones they were less curved. The hair that still remains on the skin of the St. Petersburg specimen is of the colour of the camel, very thick-set and curled in locks. Bristles of a dark colour are interspersed, some reddish, and some nearly black. The colour of the skin is a dull black, as in living elephants (see restoration, [Plate XX.]).
Remains of the Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) have been found in great numbers in the British Isles. A list of localities (from Mr. Leith Adams’s monograph on fossil elephants) is given in the Appendix, but even this might be extended. Mr. Samuel Woodward calculated that upward of two thousand grinders of elephants have been dredged up during a period of thirteen years upon the oyster-bed off Hasborough, on the Norfolk coast. But many of these doubtless belong to other species of older date, such as Elephas antiquus.
Dr. Bree, of Colchester, says that the sea-bottom off Dunkirk, whence he has made a collection, is so full of mammalian remains that the sailors speak of it as “the Burying-ground.”