Ice-beds on Eschscholtz Bay 85 



ivory which is collected for sale throughout Siberia is extracted 

 from the lofty, precipitous, and sandy banks of the rivers of that 

 country ; that in every climate and latitude, from the zone of the 

 mountains in central Asia to the frozen coasts of the Arctic Ocean, 

 all Siberia abounds in these bones, but that the best fossil ivory is 

 found in the frozen lands adjacent to the Arctic Circle ; that the 

 bones of large and small animals lie in some places piled together 

 in great heaps, but, in general, they are scattered separately, as if 

 they had been agitated by waters, and buried in mud and gravel. 



" The term mammoth has been applied indiscriminately to all the 

 largest species of fossil animals, and is a word of Tartar origin, 

 meaning simply ' animal of the earth.' It is now appropriated ex- 

 clusively to the fossil elephant, of which one species only has been 

 yet established, differing materially from the two existing species, 

 which are limited, one to Asia, the other to Africa. 



" Of all the fossil animals that have been ever discovered, the 

 most remarkable is the entire carcass of a mammoth, with its tlesh, 

 skin, and hair still fresh and well preserved, which in the year 1803 

 fell from the frozen cliff of a peninsula in Siberia, near the mouth 

 of the Lena.' Nearly five years elapsed between the period when 

 this carcass was first observed by a Tungusian in the thawing cliff, 

 in 1799, and the moment when it became entirely disengaged, and 

 fell down upon the strand, between the shore and the base of the 

 cliff". Here it lay two more years, till great part of the flesh was 

 devoured by wolves and bears ; the skeleton was then collected by 

 Air. Adams and sent to Petersburg. Many of the ligaments 

 were perfect, and also the head, with its integuments, weighing four 

 hundred and fourteen pounds without the tusks, whose weight to- 

 gether was three hundred and sixty pounds. Great part of the skin 

 of the body was preserved, and was covered with reddish wool and 

 black hairs ; about thirty-six pounds of hair were collected from 

 the sand, into which it had been trampled by the bears. 



" The following description, by Mr. Adams, of the place in which 

 this mammoth was found will form an interesting subject of com- 

 parison with Captain Beechey's account of the cliff in Eschscholtz 

 Bay : ' The place where I found the mammoth is about sixty paces 

 distant from the shore, and nearly a hundred paces from the escarp- 

 ment of the ice from which it had fallen. This escarpment occupies 



^ The details of this case are published by Dr. Tilesius in the fifth volume 

 of the Memoirs of the Academy of Petersburg, and also by Mr. Adams in the 

 Journal du Nord, printed at Petersburg in 1807. 



