210 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



containing them is frozen as hard as a rock; and, as it 

 thaws annually, the bones drop out or are quarried by the 

 natives. From time immemorial this has been pro- 

 ceeding, and the ivory hunters have been obtaining their 

 annual supply without any sensible diminution of the 

 store they draw from. Some tusks found in New Siberia 

 weigh 480 lbs., and from that island alone the merchants 

 of Yakutzk, in 1821, obtained 20,000 lbs. weight of this 

 fossil ivory. Though the tusks of the mammoth (JElephas 

 •primigenius) are chiefly sought for, bones and teeth of 

 other animals are found, and among the rest those of the 

 Rhinoceros tichorinus, of which the skulls, flesh, and skin, 

 with its hair, have been procured. The remarkable dis- 

 covery in 1799, by a Tungusian, at the mouth of the Lena, 

 of the entire carcase of a mammoth, in excellent preserva- 

 tion, is well known. The existence of these numerous 

 testimonials of an ancient fauna is suggestive of many 

 curious speculations, and geologists seem hitherto to have 

 failed in explaining the circumstances under which accu- 

 mulations so vast could occur in such high latitudes. The 

 difficulty is increased when we consider that these bones 

 have not been detected to the east of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains in the northern latitudes. None have hitherto been 

 found in Rupert's Land, though the annual waste of 

 the banks of the large rivers and the frequent land slips 

 would have revealed them to the natives or fur traders 

 had they existed even in small numbers. They are rare 

 also, or altogether wanting, in Canada, but in the valley 

 of the Mississippi the bone-licks are well known as most 

 extensive and furnishing the remains of a different series 

 of extinct quadrupeds. 



The existence of the skull of a musk ox in Kotzebue 

 Sound is of much interest. This relic is preserved in the 



