The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

THE GREAT EXTINCTIONS 231
tions from the skin on the preservation of wool. They replied
in general confirmation of Neuville:
. . . Those interested in wool assume that the function of the
wool wax is to protect the wool fibres from the weather and to
maintain the animal in a dry and warm condition. Arguments in
this direction are of course mainly speculative. We do know, however,
that shorn wool in its natural state can be stored and transported
without entanglement (or felting) of the fibres, while scoured wool
becomes entangled so that, during subsequent processing,
fibre
breakage at the card is significantly increased. It seems reasonable,
therefore, to assume that the wool wax is responsible not only for
conferring protection against the weather but also for the maintenance
of the fleece in an orderly and hence more efficacious state
(458).
It appears that there has been no scientific study of the precise
points at issue here; no one has measured in any scien-
tific way the quantitative effect of oily secretions in keeping
heat in or moisture out. Despite this fact, however, we are
at least justified, on the basis of the facts cited above, in re-
jecting the claims advanced for the hair of the mammoth as
an adaptive feature to a very cold climate.
Neuville goes on to destroy one or two other arguments
in favor of the mammoth's adaptation to cold:
... It has been thought that the reduction of the ears, thick and
very small relatively to those of the existing elephants, might be so
understood in this sense; such large and thin ears as those of the
elephants would probably be very sensitive to the action of cold.
But it has also been suggested that the fattiness and peculiar form
of the tail of the mammoth was an adaptive character of the same
kind; however, it is to the fat rumped sheep, animals of the hot
regions, whose range extends to the center of Africa, that we must
go for an analogue to the last character.
It is therefore, only thanks to entirely superficial comparisons
which do not stand a somewhat detailed analysis, that it has been
possible to regard the mammoth as adapted to the cold. On account
of the peculiar character of the pelage the animal was, on the con-
trary, at a disadvantage in this respect (325:331-33).
There remains the question of the layer of fat, about
three inches thick, which is found under the skin of the