FOSSIL REMAINS. 351 



I have to observe on this passage, that it contains no de- 

 cisive evidence to show that the ice seen by Mr. Adams on 

 the front of the cliff" from v/hich the elephant had fallen, was 

 any thing more than a superficial facing, similar to that found 

 by Captain Beechey on parts of the front of the earthy cliff" 

 in Eschscholtz Bay ; the same cliff" which, a few years before, 

 when visited by Kotzebue, seems to have been so completely 

 incased with a false fronting of ice as to induce him to con- 

 sider the entire hill to be a solid iceberg. One thing, how- 

 ever, is certain as to this mammoth, viz. that whether it was 

 imbedded in a matrix of pure ice or of frozen earth, it must 

 have been rapidly and totally enveloped in that matrix before 

 its flesh had imdergone decay, and that whatever may have 

 been the climate of the coast of Siberia in antecedent periods, 

 not only was it intensely cold within a few days after the 

 mammoth perished, but it has also continued cold from that 

 time to the present hour. 



Remains of the rhinoceros also appear to be nearly co-ex- 

 tensive with those of the elephant in these northern regions. 

 Pallas mentions the head of a rhinoceros which was found be- 

 yond Lake Baikal, near Tshikoi, and four heads and five 

 horns of this animal from various parts of Siberia on the Irtis, 

 the Alei, the Obi, and the Lena. These horns in the frozen 

 districts are so well preserved, that splices of them are used by 

 the natives to strengthen their bows. 



Pallas conceived that these remains are not derived from 

 animals that ever inhabited Siberia, but from carcasses drifted 

 northward from the southern regions by some violent aqueous 

 catastrophe, and that there is proof both of the violence and 

 suddenness of this catastrophe in the phenomenon of an entire 

 rhinoceros found with its skin, tendons, ligaments, and flesh 

 preserved in the frozen soil of the coldest part of Eastern Si- 

 beria. On the arrival of Pallas in Ircutia in March, 1772, the 

 head of this animal was laid before him, together with two of 

 its feet, having their skin and flesh hardened like a mummy ; 

 it had been found in December, 1771, in the sand banks of 

 the Wiliiji, which runs in about 64" of north latitude into the 

 Lena ; the head and two feet only were taken care of; the rest 



