The bones and teeth of the mammoth are very common in the river gravels and clays of Western Europe and England, and a complete skull, with its tusks, dug up at Ilford, in the east of London, is in the Natural History Museum. Frozen carcasses of this animal are found in Northern Siberia, and two showing much of the skin and hair are in the museum of Petrograd. There is no tradition or knowledge of the mammoth among living races of men. The natives of Siberia, who have from time immemorial done a large trade in the ivory, regard the tusks as "horns," and have stories about the ghosts of the mammoth, but no tradition of it as a living beast. The mammoth was closer to the Indian elephant of to-day than to the African one. It had, as these drawings show, a pelt of long hair. Indian elephants from upland regions often have a good deal of hair all over the body: and the newborn young of both the Indian and African elephant has a complete coat of hair. The drawings here reproduced are not only of thrilling interest because they are the work of remotely ancient men who lived with and observed mammoths in the south of France, but also because they show an extraordinary skill in "sketching"–in giving the essential lines of the creature portrayed and in reproducing the artist's "impression." These artists were "impressionists"–the earliest and most sincere–without self-consciousness or other purpose than that of making line and colour truly register and indicate their vivid impressions. It is interesting to note that (as in other works of art showing true artistic gift) actual error in drawing (for instance, in the size and shape of the eye and the placing of the two tusks on the same side of the trunk–possibly due to the unfinished state of the drawing) sometimes accompanies the most penetrating observation and skilful delineation of the characteristic form and pose of the animal. Probably mammoths were getting rare in the south of France when these drawings were made, and were not so familiar in all their details to the artist as were bison, horse, and deer. CHAPTER III THE ART OF PREHISTORIC MEN