Before this discovery the food of the Mammoth was unknown, and all sorts of theories were devised in order to account for its remains being found so far north. Some thought that the Mammoth lived in temperate regions, and that the carcases were swept down by great floods into higher and colder latitudes. But it would be impossible for the bodies to be hurried along a devious course for so many miles without a good deal of injury, and probably they would fall to pieces on the way. But, as Professor Owen has so convincingly argued, there is no reason why herds of Mammoths should not have obtained a sufficient supply of food in a country like the southern part of Siberia, where trees abound in spite of the fact that during a great part of the year it is covered with snow. And this is his line of reasoning. The molar teeth of the elephant show a highly complicated and peculiar structure, and there are no other quadrupeds that feed to such an extent on the woody fibre of the branches of trees. Many mammals, as we know, eat the leaves of trees; some gnaw the bark; but elephants alone tear down and crunch the branches. One would think there was but little nourishment to be got from such. But the hard vertical plates of their huge grinders enable them to pound up the tough vegetable tissue and render it more or less palatable. Of course, the foliage is the most tempting, but where foliage is scarce something more is required. Now, in the teeth of the Mammoth the same principle of construction is observed, only with greater complexity, for there are more of these grinding plates and a larger proportion of dense enamel. Hence the inference seems unmistakable that the extinct species fed more largely on woody fibre than does the elephant of to-day. Forests of hardy trees and shrubs still grow upon the frozen soil of Siberia, and skirt the banks of the Lena as far north as the sixtieth parallel of latitude. If the Mammoth flourished in temperate latitudes only, as formerly suggested, then its thick shaggy coat becomes superfluous and meaningless; but if it lived in the region where its body has been found, then the argument from its teeth, and the fir-spikes found in its stomach, is confirmed by the nature of its skin, and all the old difficulties vanish. Professor Owen considers that we may safely infer that, if living at the present day, it would find a sufficient supply of food at all seasons of the year in the sixtieth parallel, and even higher. Perhaps they migrated north during the summer; and, judging from the present limits of arboreal vegetation, they may have been able to subsist even in latitude 70° north, for at the extreme points of Lapland pines attain a height of sixty feet.[66] [66] Sir Henry Howorth, in his _Mammoth and the Flood_, suggests another theory, and gives some valuable information.