346 Sir R. I. Murchison on the 



blocks and enormous pepites of gold into broad lateral de- 

 pressions. 



In proposing a lacustrine entombment for the Uralian 

 mammals, we are borne out by the constant position of thick 

 masses of silt and clay overlying the coarser shingle. If the 

 deposits had been submarine — even if no traces of shells 

 were visible, there might have been some indications of the 

 action of the waters — some appearance of a coast line ; but 

 nowhere can the geologist imagine such a former state, 

 whilst the superposition of the clay to the shingle is best ex- 

 plained on the hypothesis of formation, under lacustrine or 

 broad fluviatile conditions, which eventually assumed a tran- 

 quil character. Such, in fact, are precisely the cases of the 

 great valleys of the Rhine and the Danube ; and just as we 

 have imagined that the mammoth lived in those Uralian 

 tracts, when the adjacent parts of Siberia were occupied by 

 lakes, so do we suppose that the like animals, whose bones 

 are found, both in the coarse shingle of the Rhine, and in the 

 overlying loss near Baden-Baden, once lived upon the grounds 

 which now constitute the Black Forest, and adjacent alpine 

 tracts, whence the detritus has been derived. With evi- 

 dences of internal lakes and ancient rivers, in which the 

 bones of some of its ancient quadrupeds were lodged. Great 

 Britain, though evidently also the abode of mammoths, is 

 distinguished from the Ural and Siberia, in exhibiting around 

 its coasts, and even far into the interior, the proofs of the 

 abode of the sea or marine estuaries during long periods. 



But we now return to the Ural. A former terrestrial sur 

 face on which the great quadrupeds lived for long ages, and 

 the rupture and desiccation of adjacent lakes, coincident with 

 some of the last elevations of the chain, will, we are con- 

 vinced, best explain the condition in which the remains of 

 the mammoths are left buried on the edges of the uplifted 

 ridges of the Ural, as well as in the low lands and great 

 estuaries farthest removed from them. In the depressions 

 at the very foot of the chain, the mammoth skeletons are 

 broken up, and their bones, together with those of Bhinoce- 

 ro8 tichorhinus and Bos Urus^ are rudely commingled in the 

 coarse shingle derived from the mountains, or in the clay 



