306 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



ardico woJmende, &c. Berlin, 1720 (in French in Recueil de 

 Voiagcs au Nord, Amsterdam, 1731-38, Vol. VIII. p. 373). 

 According to the accounts given by Miiller, who lived in Siberia 

 as a Swedish prisoner of war,^ the tusks formed the animal's 

 horns. With these, which were fastened above the eyes and 

 were movable, the animal dug a way for itself through the clay 

 and mud, but when it came to sandy soil, the sand ran together 

 so that the mammoth stuck fast and perished. Miiller further 

 states, that many assured him that they themselves had seen 

 such animals on the other side of Beresovsk in large grottos in 

 the Ural mountains {loc. cit. p. 382). 



Klaproth received a similar account of the mammoth's way 

 of life from the Chinese in the Busso-Chinese frontier and trad- 

 ing town Kyachta. For mammoth ivory was considered to be 

 tusks of tire giant rat tien-shic, which is only found in the cold 

 regions along the coast of the Polar Sea, avoids the light, and 

 lives in dark holes in the interior of the earth. Its flesh is 

 said to be cooling and Avholesome. Some Chinese literati con- 

 sidered that the discovery of these immense earth rats might 

 even explain the origin of earthquakes.^ 



It was not until the latter half of the last century that a 

 European scientific man had an opportunity of examining a 

 similixv Jind. In the year 1771 a complete rhinoceros, with flesh 

 and hide, was uncovered by a landslip on the river Wilui in QV 

 N.L. Its head and feet are still preserved at St. Petersburg. 

 All the other parts" were allowed to be destroyed for want of 

 means of transport and preservation.^ What was taken away 

 showed that this primeval rhinoceros [Rliinoccros antiquitatU 

 Blumenbach) had been covered with hair and differed from all 

 now living species of the same family, though strongly re- 

 sembling them in shape and size. Already, long before the 

 horns of the fossil rhinoceros had attracted the attention of 

 the natives, pieces of these horns were used for the same pur- 

 poses for which the Chukches employ strips of whalebone, viz. 

 to increase the elasticity of their bows. They were considered at 



1 Strahlenberg in Das Nord- tmd Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia, 

 S|-ockholm, 1730, p. 393, also gives a large number of statements regarding 

 the fossil Siberian ivory, and mentions that the distinguislied Siberian 

 traveller Messerschmidt found a complete skeleton on the river Tom. 



2 Tilesius, De skeleto mammonteo Sihirico (Mem. de VAcad. de St. Peters- 

 hourg, T. V. pour Vanneel812, p. 409). Middendorif, S\h. Pte/se, IV. i. p. 274. 

 Von Olfers, Die Uberreste vonoeltlicher RiesentJiiere in Beziehiinq zu Ostasia- 

 tischen Sagen und Chinesischen Schriften {Ahhandl. derAhad.d. Wissensch. zu 

 Berlin aits dem Jahre 1839, p. 51). 



^ P. S. Pallas, De reUquiis anhnaliinn exoticorum per Asiam horealem 

 repertis complementum {Novi commentarii Acad. Sc Petropolltanm, XVII. 

 pro anno 1772, p. 576), and Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen 

 Relchii, Th. III. St. Petersburg, 1776, p. 97. 



