FOSSIL REMAINS. 353 



detritus of rocks, all apparently resulting from tlie simultaneous 

 action of water, but which the operation of existing seas and 

 rivers in the districts occupied by this detritus can never have 

 produced, and are only tending to destroy, we may surely be 

 justified in referring them all to some adequate and common 

 cause, such as the catastrophe of a violent and general inun- 

 dation alone seems competent to have afforded. 



The flicts we have been considering are obviously much con- 

 nected with the still unsettled question respecting the former 

 climate and temperature of that part of the earth in which 

 they occur. Too much stress has, I thiniv, been laid on the 

 circumstance of the mammoth in Siberia being covered with 

 hair. We have living examples of animals in warm latitudes 

 which are not less abundantly covered with hair and wool in 

 proportion to the size, than the elephant at the mouth of the 

 Lena. Such is the hyaena villosa lately noticed at the Cape 

 by Dr. Smith, and described (vol. xv. plate 2, page 463, 

 Linn. Trans.) as having the hair on the neck and body very 

 long and shaggy, measuring in many places, but particularly 

 about the sides and back, at least six inches; again, the thick 

 shaggy covering on the anterior part on the body of the male 

 lion, and the hairy coat of the camel (both of them inhabit- 

 ants of the warmest climates), present analogies which show 

 that no conclusive argument in proof that the Siberian ele- 

 phant was the inhabitant of a cold climate can be drawn from 

 the fact of the skin of the frozen carcass at the mouth of the 

 Lena having been covered with coarse hair and wool, but even 

 if it were proved that the climate of the arctic regions was the 

 same both before and after the extirpation of these animals, still 

 must we refer to some great catastrophe to account for the 

 fact of their universal extirpation ; and from those who deny 

 the occurrence of such catastrophe, it may fairly be demanded 

 why these extinct animals have not continued to live on to the 

 present hour. It is vain to contend that they have been sub- 

 dued and extirpated by man, since whatever may be conceded as 

 possible with respect to Europe, it is in the highest degree im- 

 probable that he could have exercised such influence over the 

 whole vast wilderness of Northern Asia, and almost impossible 

 that he could have done so in the boundless forests of North 



