Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/29





may be asserted, on the universal testimony of travellers and naturalists, that the whole of Asiatic Russia abounds in the remains of these huge animals. Their bones and tusks are of so common occurrence, that the Siberians, in order to explain such a phenomenon, have invented a tale that they belonged to animals which lived underground in the manner of moles, and could not bear the light of day. To these they gave the name of Mammont or Mammouth, as some assert from the word mamma, which, in one of the Tatar dialects, B