142 



CORRESPONDENCE 



The New Fittings for the South African Museum. 



In your abstract of the Report of the Trustees of the South African Museum 

 for 1895 (antea p. 66) you mention that the air-tight iron and glass cases, on my 

 system, for the new building in Cape Town, are to be supplied by Chubb & Sons' 

 Safe Company. I beg to state that this London firm has ordered the said fittings 

 in Dresden, but, unfortunately, from a manufacturer who is not up to date in this 

 respect. Since my last publication (in the year 1892) on this matter, which has 

 been reported also by you (vol. v., p. 14, 1894), I have, with the help of an exceed- 

 ingly clever member of the firm of Messrs. Herrmann & Ranft, in Dresden, hit 

 upon some very essential improvements, which alter the aspect of these fittings, 

 cases as well as desks, much to their advantage. I regret that I have not yet found 

 leisure to publish anything about this progress (though I hope to be able to do so 

 still in the course of this year, with the necessary figures for illustration), and that, 

 in consequence, the South African Museum will receive fittings after a system given 

 up by myself several years since, and which I, for my part, would not advocate any 

 longer, since " the better is the enemy of the good." 



Royal Zoological Museum, Dresden. A. B. Meyer. 



July 2nd, 1896. 



The Cause of the Mammoth's Extinction. 



In Professor Bonney's review of Dr. Gregory's valuable work (Natural 

 Science, vol. ix., pp. 53-57) reference is made to the discovery of large quantities of 

 bones of animals lying exposed on the surface in Eastern Africa, unweathered and 

 ungnawed, and it is suggested that in some way or other these bones illustrate the 

 well-known caches and deposits of bones which date from Pleistocene times and 

 which have occupied me much, and I am reminded of the analogy by Dr. Bonney. 



The fact was familiar enough to me as existing elsewhere. Darwin has a very 

 interesting reference to similar collections of bones in South America. My brother- 

 in-law, who has long had a cattle ranche in New Mexico, tells me that seasons of 

 great drought there are always followed by similar phenomena. The buffalo plague 

 in South Africa left similar mementoes, while not long ago Mr. Wylde at my own 

 table described the terrible sights he had seen on the plains of the Eastern Soudan, 

 where 200,000 skeletons lay exposed on the ground, ttie result, not of drought, but of 

 Martini rifles. Similar deposits to these are referred to in my Mammoth book, but 

 I have there protested, and I propose to protest again, against there being the 

 smallest analogy between them and the Pleistocene buried bones. 



In the first place, the series of these buried bones is really conterminous with 

 the Siberian deposits, where the flesh and soft parts of the animals are preserved. 

 The two conditions of the preservation of these latter are that they have remained 

 frozen since they were deposited, and that they were buried and protected from 

 weathering directly after they died, and have remained covered in ever since. The 

 latter condition applies to all the cases where whole skeletons have been found with 

 their several bones in position, which has happened in many places, as I have shown, 

 from the Pyrenees to the Yellow Sea. 



It is true that the bones exposed on the African plains remain ungnawed, largely 

 because they have been stripped of their flesh by raptorial birds which cannot gnaw 

 bones. It is true also that they remain for a year or two with their edges sharp, but 

 this condition is very short-lived, the rain and the sun speedily disintegrate and 

 weather them. 



