Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/18

 10 ELLEN CONDON McCoRNACK only the skeleton but the muscles, skin and hair all in a fine state of preservation. These northern specimens and perhaps all Mammoths had a mane and a coat of long, dark hair with short wool, reddish brown hair beneath. Their ivory tusks were of very great length, some of them curving downward then out and upward until they formed almost a complete circle. It is difficult to see how this circular tusk could be used for tearing down branches, twigs and leaves for food or as a weapon of warfare, and perhaps this difficulty may partly ac- count for the fact that the fantastic circular form has long since passed away, while the straighter tusks remain until now. Africa is supposed to have been the original home of the elephant and our American forms traveled over a land bridge into Europe on through Asia and over another land bridge into Alaska. PART III The limited verdure of the age of ice was a chapter of the past, for the climate of the Willamette Sound was warmer and the forests even richer and more varied than we find them now. We would expect to find grand forests of pine, fir, spruce, red- wood, cedar and hemlock trees and against this dark back- ground of conifers to see the star-like blossoms and light green foliage of the dogwood, the creamy tassels of the ocean spray and the golden yellow of the Oregon grape, just as we see them now. The islands, too, would have their many grand old oaks, their mountain laurels, rhododendrons and flowering cur- rants and beneath them all a bright carpet of many flowers. Among the birds, too, we should expect to find man> of our modern friends. The bright oriole with its long pendant nest, the many warblers and their sweet songs, the meadow lark with notes so full of exultant joy or of tender pathos that, heard in our land of long ago, they would almost seem to foreshadow the coming of the human soul. But was there no human eye to see ? Were there no shelters of skins and boughs under the oaks and firs of those picturesque