Habitation and Destruction of the Mammonths. 357 



siderable submergence at the period when these animals were 

 destroyed. Such facts as to the nature and distribution of 

 the entombing materials which occupy cliffs high above the 

 low valleys, compel us to believe, that the greater part of this 

 low continent, unlike the Ural and the higher portions of Sibe- 

 ria, was not dry land during the existence of the mammoths, 

 or in the period immediately antecedent to our own 4 but 

 was then rather in the same subaqueous condition as the low 

 lands of northern Siberia, when the mammoths' bones were 

 there transported into estuaries. Hence, we think, that 

 many of the mammalian remains to which we now allude, may 

 have been transported into adjacent lakes and estuaries by 

 rivers ; and, in some instances, carried out great distances 

 to sea from the surrounding lands ; the Ural (including a 

 large tract of Permia) and Siberia on the east, the Crimaea* 

 and Caucasus on the south, or the Carpathian mountains on 

 the west. 



But, besides these former encompassing lands, there are 

 certain tracts within Russia, which, though now of no great 

 altitude, are so exempt from debris and drift, that it is natural 

 to infer they may have formed low islets in the ancient 

 waters which covered the great mass of the present lands. 

 This view we would support by an illustration drawn from 

 natural history and the nature of the ground. 



Of all the remarkable quadrupeds which ranged over con- 

 tinents, one species only now remains alive (and this point 

 even is doubtful)! to connect the historic era, or the pre- 



* See Demidoff, Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale, vol. ii. The 

 reader will there find an account of the remains of bones of mammoth, 

 bos, Ursus spelceusj horse, &c., as interred in a reddish coloured argilla- 

 ceous drift near Odessa ( Terrain Clysmien), which covers the surface, and 

 enters into the clefts of the subjacent tertiary or steppe limestone. M. 

 Huot, the author of that description, refers this deposit to lacustrine 

 waters. He also found the Mastodon anpmtidms associated with the 

 mammoth at Kamisch Burun, near Kertch. These animals lived, of 

 course, in the adjacent high grounds of the Caucasus and Crimsea (see 

 our remarks thereon, p. 304.) 



t Notwithstanding the deep interest attached to the Bos Aurochs^ which 

 may, we suppose, prove to be the only existing remnant of the great 



