362 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



decay, leads us to conclude that the animals died together, 

 and together were protected from decay. As for the 

 mammoth, there are credibly attested cases in which it has 

 been discovered embedded in frozen earth, with flesh, and 

 skin, and hair. It is admitted by eminent geologists that the 

 condition of many mammoth remains in Siberia indicates 

 conclusively that the animals were enveloped in ice or frozen 

 mud suddenly, and that the ice in which they perished has 

 never melted from the moment of their destruction. Pro- 

 fessor Brandt, of Berlin, was able to pronounce as to the 

 condition of the head of a rhinoceros, that there were 

 evidences pointing towards death by asphyxia. The bodies 

 of certain mammoths were discovered standing upright in 

 the enveloping ice shroud, facing towards the north. 



The character of the localities in which these enormous 

 osseous deposits are found in Siberia is not that of river-beds 

 only, ancient or present, nor low-lying marshes, nor land that 

 could ever have been boggy. " Experience has shown," says 

 Wrangell, " that more are found in elevations situated near 

 high hills than along the low coast, or the flat tundra." Vast 

 hecatombs are discovered 150 miles away from any consider- 

 able river, or in high grounds far away from any possible 

 river channel. 



The conclusion suggested is that the mammoth and its 

 companions perished by some wide-spread catastrophe which 

 operated suddenly over a wide area, not by the slow pro- 

 cesses of the ordinary struggle for existence, not by accumu- 

 lation under normal causes, but by one of Nature's hecatombs, 

 when a vast fauna perished simultaneously. 



The quantity, nature, and condition of bone deposits in 

 many large caves and fissures are claimed as pointing to a 

 similar conclusion. Setting aside caves that were at some 

 time wholly or partly lairs of wild beasts, or habitations of 

 men, there are many of great size crammed full of bone 

 debris representing all sorts of animals, man included, filled 

 up to the roof, with perhaps a layer of stalagmite on top, the 

 interstices between the bones made up of gravel, clay, shells, 

 and other detritus, the identity of which, with the diluvium 

 around, has been accepted by many scientific observers. 



Mr. Howorth sums up his conclusion thus : " The destruc- 

 tion of a fauna^ great and small, old and young, the piling 

 of a mixed medley of its remains upon one another in a state 

 of freshness without signs of weathering or decay, is, in the 

 case of caverns, as in that of surface beds, only consistent 



