Emily Dickinson Lexicon

MAM'MOTH, n. [Russ. mamant, the skeleton of a huge animal, now extinct, or from the Hebrew behemoth.]

The Russian name of an extinct species of Elephant, nearly allied to the Elephant of India. It was thickly covered with hair of three sorts, one of these, stiff black bristles a foot in length, another coarse flexible hair, and the third a kind of wool. In the year 1799, one of these animals, in an entire state, thawed out of an icebank, near the mouth of a river in the north of Siberia. Its remains have been found upon both continents. It is a distinct animal from both the North American and South American Mastodon.