M. Renoir on the Traces of Ancient Glaciers, 87 



We are persuaded that in northern regions the polish of the 

 surfaces left by the ice is more perfect and much better pre- 

 served than in other climates, because the melting of the ice 

 must have commenced at a much later period, and therefore 

 the polish has not been so long exposed to the destructive ac- 

 tion of the atmosphere. M. Robert in fact found it unim- 

 paired. 



The accumulation of the remains of mammoths, mentioned 

 by M. Robert, affords still another ^oof that ice at one time 

 covered the whole surface of the earth, and the remains of 

 which yet bury tvy^o entire zones around the two poles. This 

 traveller states, that the fossil bones are found principally in 

 the course of the river Kara. This river, however, relatively 

 speaking, has not a long course, and, with the exception of 

 Nova Zembla, and a portion of the country of the Samoyedes, 

 it is in the most northern part of Asia. Every one is aware 

 that the congeners of these elephants are now to be found only 

 in the lowest latitudes, and it is generally admitted that a 

 change of temperature must have taken place in the climates 

 of the north. To what is it owing, then, that this river has 

 become the most abundant repository of these ancient pachy- 

 dermata, seeing that it is narrow and completely enclosed on 

 the west by the Poyas mountains, which terminate at the sea, 

 and form the northern part of the Oural mountains ; on the 

 south and east by the Samoyede chain, which is only a branch 

 of the Poyas mountains, likewise terminating at the sea, and 

 comprised between the sea of Kara and the bay of Obi ; and 

 on the north by the gulf of Erouwei, or the sea of Kara ? If 

 these huge animals had been swept along by currents of water 

 coming from the south, these currents could never have carried 

 them over the two chains enclosing the basin of the Kara, 

 and would have deposited them on the western side of the first 

 and the southern side of the second, at the foot of which they 

 would have been found imbedded in the alluvium. We can 

 no longer entertain the notion which has been started, that 

 these elephants, of which the species does not exist anywhere 

 else, have migrated in particular circumstances, and by a spoil- 

 taneous movement, from the southern regions of Asia ; for even 

 in that case they would have had greater difficulty in pene- 

 trating to the banks of the Kara than to any other place what- 

 ever. 



