174 MAMMA r,s. 



the west. Mr. Dawkins, in an article in the "Natural History Review" (July, 1865), while in 

 the text he gives 72° N. Lat. as the northern limit of these remains, seems disposed in a note to 

 admit that their range pj'obably extended, as I have put it, to the actual shores of the Polar Sea, 

 wherever that might be ; for we must remember that in the daj's we are speaking of, it rested 

 probably more to the south of its present limit. Ho says, "Probably also in the higher northern 

 latitudes of the islands of New Siberia and the liiichow group, the remains of the Tiehorhine 

 Rhinoceros are to be found in the vast accumulation of organic remains, of which, as the energetic 

 Russian explorer Sannikow writes, the irholc so/7 of the first of Ihe Tjiichow Islands appears to consist. 

 The occurrence of large quantities of the bones and skulls of Oxen, Buffaloes, Horses, and Sheep, 

 associated with the Mammoth on the hills of the interior of New Siberia (Lat. 75°'6), led him to infer 

 that, at the time when the island supported such vast herds of these animals, the climate must have 

 been much milder than at present, when the icy wildei'ncss produces nothing that could alford them 

 nourishment. See Wrangel's ' Siberia and Polar Sea,' 1840. Edit. Major Sabine. Introduction."* 



Whether there may have been a warmer climate in these icy regions at some former period or 

 not is a question on which these heaps of bones throw no light, for it is plain that they are not the 

 quiet grave3rard of parishioners who lived and died upon the spot, but accumulations brought from 

 elsewhere by ice and rivers or floods. The very vastness of the accumulations composing the whole 

 soil forbids the idea of their being remains of the animals that lived and fed whore they died, and the 

 fact that frozen carcasses have been found in these places of deposit, shows that since the animal died 

 no material change can have taken place in the climate, because the flesh has kept all that time 

 locked up in ribs of ice. On such a supposition the change from heat to cold must have follo^\'cd 

 death ^vithin a few hours ; and had we only one to deal with, we might admit (hat, however inijjro- 

 bable it might be, such a sudden change was at least possible. But in these regions there are more 

 carcasses than one in the same condition, and at different depths ; these could not have all died on the 

 same day ; but as they are preserved alike, the cold must have been permanent and continuous. 



In 1771 (thirty j^cars before the discovery of the Mammoth by Adams, which did not take 

 place until 1801), a carcass of the extinct Rhinoceros, since called the woolly-haired Rhinoceros 

 (Rh. ticiiorinus), was found on the banks of the A^ilni, a branch of the Lena. Fortmiately, 

 Pallas heard of it, and by his exertions the head and feet wete secured, and have been 

 preserved in the Museum of St. Petersburg ; and these have been latterly carefully (>xainined and 

 described by Brandt. When found, it was considerably advanced towards decay, imbedded in a 

 sandy bank, six feet above the water. It measured about eleven feet in length and ten feet and a half 

 in height. The carcass of the animal, in all its bulk, was still covered with skin ; but it was so far 

 gone that only the head and feet could be removed. "I saw the parts," says Pallas, "at Irkutsk, 

 and at the first glance perceived that thej' belonged to a Rhinoceros fuUj' grown ; the head especially 

 was easily distinguished, since it was covered with the hide, which had preserved its organisation, 

 many short hairs reniaining upon it. The country watered by the Vilni," he adds, " is mountainous, 

 and the strata horizontal : they consist of sandj^ and calcareous schists and beds of claj', mixed with 

 great quantities of pyrites. Near the spot, and close to the river, there is a little hillock of about 

 ninety feet elevation, and which, (hough sandy, contains beds of grind or millstone. The body of 

 the Rhinoceriis was buried in a coarse saiidy gravel mwv (liis liijldck ; and (l\e iia(ui'(' of (lie soil, 



* Mr. Bovu Dawkins on the Dentition of liliinuccros megarliinUN in thu '■ Natural History Koview," No. xix., 

 J). Li!l!l, July, 18(15. 



