4 



384 On the Mammoth and the Mastodon. 



about by progressive alternations of land and sea.* 



I am far from believing that such changes in the external world 

 were the cause of the ultimate extinction of the Elephas primi- 

 genius ; but I am convinced that the peculiarities in its ascertained 

 organization are such as to render it quite possible for the animal 

 to have existed as near the pole as is compatible with the growth 

 of hardy trees or shrubs. The fact seems to have been generally 

 overlooked, that an animal organized to gain its subsistence from 

 the branches or woody fibre of trees, is thereby rendered indepen- 

 dent of the seasons which regulate the development of leaves and 

 fruit ; the forest-food of such a species becomes as perennial as the 

 lichens that flourish beneath the winter snows of Lapland ; and, 

 were such a quadruped to be clothed, like the reindeer, with a 

 natural garment capable of resisting the rigours of an Arctic win- 

 ter, its adaptation for such a climate would be complete. Had 

 our knowledge of the mammoth, indeed, been restricted, as in the 

 case of almost every other extinct animal, to its bones and teeth, 

 it would have been deemed a hazardous speculation to have con- 

 ceived, a priori^ that the extinct ancient elephant, whose remains 

 were so abundant in the frozen soil of Siberia, had been clad, like 

 most existing quadrupeds adapted for such a climate, with a double 

 garment of close fur and coarse hair ; seeing that both the existing 

 species of elephant are almost naked, or, at best, scantily provided 

 when young with scattered coarse hairs of one kind only. 



The wonderful and unlocked for discovery of an entire mam- 

 moth, demonstrating the Arctic character of its natural clothing, 

 has, however, confirmed the deductions which might have been 

 leo;itimately founded ''upon the localities of its most abundant 

 remains, as well as upon the structure of its teeth, viz., that, like 

 the reindeer and musk ox of the present day, it was capable of exist- 

 ing in hio-h northern latitudes. 



The circumstances of this discovery have been recorded by Mr. 

 Adams, in the 'Journal du Nord,' printed at Petersburg in 1807, 

 and in the 5th volume of the 'Memoirs of the Imperial Academy 

 of Sciences at St. Petersburg,' of which an excellent English trans- 

 lation was published in 1819. 



rendu glacial le pays qu'ils habitaient. Get evenement a ete subit, instan- 

 tane, sans aucuae gradation, (tc." — Ossemena Fossiles, 8vo. ed., 1834:, 

 torn, i., p. 108. 



* Lyell, ' Principles of Geology,' in which the phenomena that had been 

 supposed " to have banished for ever all idea of a slow and gradual revolu- 

 tion,"f were first attempted to be accounted for by the gradual operation of 

 ordinary and existing causes. 



t Jameson's ' Cuvier's Theory of the Earth,' 8vo., 1813, p. 16. 



