In former times, when people accidentally found the bones of these animals, they actually thought they had belonged to giant _men_, and we can scarcely wonder at that: but we know better. If only one small bone is shown to Professor Owen or Professor Huxley, he can tell at once whether it belonged to a man or an animal, a fish or a bird, and very often the particular animal too. Well, the bones of the mammoth were found in the north of Russia on the banks of the river Lena in 1800: but the Russians knew of them before that, and the name they gave the animal means “earth,” because they supposed it burrowed in the earth like a mole. This one is now in the Museum at St. Petersburg, and its brownish coat and long black hairs, and even the hoofs and some of the flesh, can be distinctly seen. The drawing in the frontispiece is taken from it. It was strange that any people could have supposed that this huge creature, larger than an elephant and with great curved tusks ten feet long and weighing 160 lbs., could have got underground of its own accord: but that was the only way in which they could account for finding it buried in the earth on the banks of the rivers. Look at the picture in the frontispiece; what a splendid animal he was, this old elephant; larger and stronger than any living elephants! Immense quantities of their bones are found in Siberia, and the tusks and teeth are brought in ship-loads to England, where they are sold for their ivory. Their skeletons have been found in most countries of Europe, in many parts of Asia, and in North America, and these animals must have been common at one time near London, for their bones have been dug up in the brick earth at Ilford in Essex and other places near the Thames. There is a skull with tusks set up with iron supports in the British Museum.[15]