On the Mammoth and the Mastodon, 389 



But, with tills limitation, if tlie physiological inferences regarding 

 the food of the mammoth from the structure of its teeth be ade- 

 quately appreciated and connected with those which may be legi- 

 timately deduced from the ascertained nature of its integument, 

 the necessity of recurring to the forces of mighty rivers, hurrying 

 along a carcass through a devious course, extending through an 

 entire degree of latitude, in order to account for its ultimate en- 

 tombment in ice, whilst so little decomposed as to have retained 

 the cuticle and hair, will disappear. And it can no longer be re- 

 garded as impossible for herds of mammoths to have obtained sub- 

 sistence in a country like the southern part of Siberia, where trees 

 abound, notwithstanding it is covered during a great part of the 

 year with snow, seeing that the leafless state of such trees during 

 even a long and severe Siberian winter would not necessarily unfit 

 their branches for yielding sustenance to the w^ell-clothed mam- 

 moth. 



With regard to the extension of the geographical range of the 

 Ele2')has primige7iius into temperate latitudes, the distribution of 

 its fossil remains teaches that it reached the fortieth deafree north 

 of the equator. History, in like manner, records that the rein- 

 deer had formerly a more extensive distribution in the temperate 

 latitudes of Europe than it now enjoys. The hairy covering of 

 the mammoth concurs, however, with the localities of its most 

 abundant remains, in showing that, like the reindeer, the northern 

 extreme of the temperate zone was its metropolis. 



Attempts have been made to account for the extinction of the 

 race of northern elephants by alterations in the climate of their 

 hemisphere, or by violent geological catastrophes, and the like 

 extraneous physical causes. When we seek to apply the same 

 hypothesis to explain the apparently contemporaneous extinction 

 of the gigantic leaf eating Mcgatheria of South America, the geo- 

 logical phenomena of that continent appear to negative the occur- 

 rence of such destructive changes. Our comparatively brief expe- 

 rience of the progress and duration of species within the historical 

 period is surely insufficient to justify, in every case of extinction, 

 the verdict of violent death. With regard to many of the larger 

 Mammalia, especially those which have passed away from the 

 American and Australian continents, the absence of sufficient signs 

 of extrinsic extirpating change or convulsion, makes it almost as 

 reasonable to speculate with Brocchi,"^' on the possibility that 



* Cited by Lyell, ' Principles of Geology,' (1835,) vol, iii., p. 104. 



