Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths. 359 



the only locality in which this species now exists, and seeing 

 that it is not far from the edge of the southern granitic 

 steppe, we cannot avoid theorizing on a contingency by which 

 some of these creatures may possibly" have been preserved. 

 That granitic steppe, the rocks of which we know to be of the 

 highest antiquity, since they have even afforded materials for 

 the construction of some adjacent silurian strata, is in many 

 parts so completely devoid of all superficial covering, and so 

 entirely differs, in that respect, from the thickly overspread 

 tracts upon its north and south, as to justify the inference 

 that it was never depressed beneath the waters since the 

 beginning of palaeozoic era, but escaped the submersions 

 which affected all the surrounding regions of Russia in 

 Europe. Some individuals of the Bos Urus may therefore, we 

 conceive, have been dwellers in this granitic ridge, until the 

 retirement of the surrounding waters enabled them, or their 

 descendants, to repeople the new jungles and forests of the 

 fresh formed ground ; and thus we could explain, by reason- 

 ing from geological appearances, how it happens that they 

 are now found living in the forests of Lithuania. Attaching, 

 however, no great value to this speculation, which may prove 

 useless, if the living species is found to be different from the 

 extinct, we leave it to naturalists to say. whether, under cir- 

 cumstances of great and probably sudden change of land and 

 water ; and other difficulties dependent on a limited subsis- 

 tence, the Aurochs or Zubr of Lithuania was not, from his ac- 

 tivity and hardy habits, more likely to have survived such 

 oscillations, than his unwieldy associates, the mammoth, 

 mastodon, and rhinoceros. 

 In terminating the subject of the entombment and dis- 



land), which appears to have been much more common, even in the 

 sixteenth century, than the Znhr or Aurochs. An ancient picture in the 

 possession of the last King of Poland, represents King Ladislaus Jajellem 

 presenting a live zubr to the fathers of the Council of Constance I thus 

 proving that it was very rare in the beginning of the fifteenth century. 

 (See also Mem. Descrip. sur la Foret de Bialavneza par le Baron de 

 Brinnen ; published at Warsaw in 1828, at which time, it was believed, 

 that 875 heads of Zubrs were still living in the forest.) 



