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| THE GREAT SIBERIAN MAMMOTH - In the center of
the south gallery of the Anthropological Building stood the chief
object of Professor Ward's astonishing Rochester collection of
prehistoric animals. This was a theoretical, but scientific
reproduction of the largest animal that has developed among the
quadrupeds of the earth. The scientist who superinteded this
construction was Doctor L. Martin, an experienced German preparator.
His measurements were taken from bones of the mammoth, which are to
be seen in the Royal Museum at Stuttgart, Germany. With an animal
thus proportioned as to bones, the operator next visited the Russian
Imperial Museum at St. Petersburg, where the remains of that most
remarkable of all mammoths are preserved. This tropical animal was
found in 1799, in a glacier near the mouth of the river Lena, in
norther Siberia. By means of the great and perpetual cold the flesh
and hair of the creature had been kept intact, and these forms have
been fiathfully reproduced as the coverings of the framework obtained
in the other way, completed. The structure measures twenty-two feet
in length as it stands in the picture, and is sixteen feet high. The
curved tusks are six feet long. The model, as reproduced, differs in
the features from the elephant of the present day only as to the
shaggy hair covering the body, and is certainly an impressive
souvenir of the past. It was surrounded by specimens fully as
astonishing. |
