rd 
Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 307 
abundance, excludes every idea of expeditions conducted by 
men is, that in some places these bones are mixed with an 
innumerable quantity of bones of other savage animals large 
and small, 
What is still more remarkable is, that they are often found 
in beds filled with marine bodies, such as shells, &c. The 
above is an extract of the details of M. Pallas. 
One particularity not less striking than any other related 
to us by this great naturalist is, that in some places elephants’ 
bones have been found having stil] some fragments of flesh 
attached to them, The general opinion of the people of Si- 
beria is, that mammonts have been dug up covered with skin 
and flesh, and still bleeding: this is an exaggeration; but it 
arises from the circumstance of the flesh being sometimes 
found preserved by the frost. 
Isbrand-Ides speaks of a head the flesh of which was pu- 
trid, and of a frozen foot as large as a man of middling sta- 
ture: and Jean-Bernhard Muller speaks of a tusk the cavity 
of which was filled with a matter resembling clotted blood. 
We might, perhaps, doubt these facts if they were not 
confirmed by one of the same kind extremely well authen- 
ticated, that of the entire and complete rhinoceros dug up 
near Vilhorci, in 1771, with all the flesh, skin, and hair 
belonging to it. We are indebted to M. Pallas for a cir- 
-cnmstantial description of this phenomenon; and the head 
and feet of it are still preserved at Petersburgh. These facts 
prove that it must have been a sudden revolution which had 
buried these astonishing monuments of antiquity. 
To these general remarks we shall subjoin a cursory view 
of the principal places in Russia where fossil bones have been 
discovered. 
We have already mentioned those found in the beds of 
the Wolga; we may add those between the Wolga and the 
Swiaga, and those along the banks of the Kama, where they 
are mixed with marine shells ; those of the river Irguis, and 
the bones given by M. Macquart to the Council of Mines, 
which are mixed with rhinoceros’ ones. 
It was also from the Wolga, without doubt, that the fe- 
U2 mur, 
