344 Sir R. I. Murchison on the 



sical geographer and geologist, and learn from them the 

 secret on which the public faith of empires may depend." — 

 Bussia and the Ural Mountains, vol. i., p. 648. By Sir Bode- 

 rick Impey Murchison. 



Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths, By Sir R. I. 

 Murchison, F.R.S., &c. 



Habitation of Mammoths and their Destruction — Similar Mammoth 

 Burial in Western Europe — Siberian Entombment of Mammoths 

 British Analogies — Conditions of Mammoth Burial explained — 

 Views of L^ ell, Humboldt, and Owen — Ancient Geography of Si- 

 beria — Bemote Age of the N, Courses of the Great Siberian 

 Streams — Elevation of Siberia, and End of Mammoth Period — 

 Fossil Quadrupeds of European Bussia — Mammoth Clay Drift 

 at Taganrog — Whether Extinct Bos Urus and Living Aurochs 

 are the same ? — If so, its Preservation explained — Subject of 

 Great Fossil Mammalia concluded. 



Though mammoths occur in certain quantities on the flanks 

 of the Ural, thus leading us to believe, that when alive they 

 inhabited the tract where their skeletons are entombed, it 

 must be recollected, that as, by other proofs, we have already 

 endeavoured to shew the comparatively recent elevation of 

 the Ural crest, this region cannot be looked upon as having 

 been rendered highly mountainous, until the very period 

 when great numbers of these animals were destroyed, — a 

 destruction which we believe to have been mainly accom- 

 plished when the present watersheds between Europe and 

 Asia were determined. Let us suppose, then, that the mam- 

 moths and their associates ranged over these hills when they 

 formed the elevated edge of an eastern continent. Further, 

 let it be assumed (and this, indeed, is quite in accordance 

 with the physical features of this region), that the greater 

 number of the broad depressions which are now filled with 

 auriferous and mammoth detritus, were then occupied by 

 lakes, in the grounds around which these extinct quadrupeds 

 had long lived, and into whose shores or bottoms their bones 

 had been washed for ages, and we shall then have before us 

 the conditions which will best explain the Uralian phenome- 

 non. No one can observe what the Russian miner has ac- 

 complislied, by damming up the existing rivers, and thus 

 forming artificial lakes in every sinuous tract in which ores 



