On the Mammoth and the Mastodon, 383 



maddened with fury, he leaped over the waves of the west at a 

 bound, and this moment reigns the uncontroled monarch of the 

 wiklerness, in despite of even Omnipotence itself." 



The following is from the work of Professor Owen, above 

 referred to : 



The remains of the mammoth occur on the Continent, as in 

 England, in the superficial deposits of sand, gravel, and loam, 

 which are strewed over all parts of Europe ; and they are found 

 in still greater abundance in the same formations of Asia, espe- 

 cially in the higher latitudes, where the soil which forms their 

 matrix is perennially frozen.'* Remains of the mammoth have 

 been found in great abundance in the cliffs of frozen mud on the 

 east side of Behring's Straits, in Esch?choltz's Bay, in Russian 

 America, lat. 66^ N.; and they have been traced, but in scan- 

 tier quantities, as far south as the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Mis- 

 souri, and South Carolina. But no authentic relics of the Ele- 

 pkas primigenius have yet been discovered in tropical latitudes,! 

 or in any part of the southern hemisphere. It would thus appear 

 that the primeval elephants formerly ranged over the whole nor- 

 thern hemisphere of the globe, from the 40th to the 60th and 

 possibly to near the 'ZOth degree of latitude. Here, at least, at 

 the mouth of the River Lena, the carcass of a mammoth has been 

 discovered, preserved entire, in the icy cliffs and frozen soil of that 

 coast. To account for this extraordinary phenomenon, geologists 

 and naturalists, biassed more or less by the analogy of the exis- 

 ting elephants, which are restricted to climes where the trees 

 flourish with perennial foliage, have had recourse to the hypothesis 

 of a change of climate in the northern hemisphere, either sudden, 

 and due to a great geological cataclysm,^ or gradual, and brought 



* Hedenstrom, in his " Survey of the Laechow Islands," on the north- 

 eastern coast of Siberia, remarks that the first of these islands is little more 

 than one mass of these bones ; and that although the Siberian traders have' 

 been in the habit of bringing over large cargoes of them (tusks) for upward 

 of sixty years, yet there appears to be no sensible diminution. 



f The fossil elephantine remains discovered in India belong to a species 

 more nearly allied to the Elcphas Indicus. 



\ Cuvier, 'Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe.' It is 

 obvious that the frozen mammoth at the mouth of the Lena forms one of the 

 strongest as well as the most striking of the celebrated anatomist's assu- 

 med "proofs that the revolutions on the earth's surface had been sudden." 

 Cuvier affirms that the mammoth could not have maintained its existence 

 in the low temperature of the region where its carcass was arrested, and 

 that at the moment when the beast was destroyeil, the laud which it trod 

 became glacial. " Cette gelee eternelle n'occupnit pas auparavant les lieux 

 ou ils ont ete saisis; car ils n'auraient pas pu vivre sous une pareille tempe- 

 lature. C'est done le meme instant qui a fait perir les animaux, et qui a 



