Jan. 26, 1888] 



NATURE 



295 



dp 



values of J- themselves require smoothing, which involves 



dt ^ 



additional labour, 



liut if — since vapour pressures only are given in our paper — we 

 have gone to one extreme, we think that Mr. Lupton has g me to 

 the other, for at 79° '9 the pressure calculated from his constants 

 differs by 3 '8 mm, (= o°*l6) from that calculated from ours, 

 and by yi mm. (= o°-i3) from our observed pressure, and this 

 difference is certainly too great. 



It might also be supposed from Mr. Lupton 's constants that 

 the value of b in the formula log f> = a + ha.' could generally be 

 expressed by a very simple number such as the one he gives 

 ( ~ 3 '3). ^ut this is not so. It happens that our constant differs 

 only very slightly from the number - 3 "3 ; it is - 3 30052, and 

 by staking off the two last figures in this constant and making a 

 corresponding slight alteration in the value of a, a much g.ejiter 

 simplification is possible than would usually be the case. 



Mr, Lupton gives five decimal places for log re, and we are 

 unable to appreciate the advantage of using a table of four- 

 figure logarithms where five places are required. 



While recognizing the advantage of methods of computation, 

 may we suggest, in conclusion, that, as a rule, only experi- 

 mentalists are capable of judging the limits of accuracy of 

 experiment, and that they may be trusted to save themselves 

 trouble where trouble may be saved without sacrificing accuracy ? 



W, Ramsay. 

 Sydney Young. 



"The Mammoth and the Flood." 



The question raised in my previous letter is too important 

 and is being too widely discussed to allow me to let it go by 

 default, and as it has a certain freshness I cannot help thinking 

 that it will prove interesting to many of your readers. 



Your critic disposes of Sir Andrew Ramsey in a very uncere- 

 monious fashion. To describe the head of the Geological Survey, 

 and the former President of the British Association and the 

 Geological Society, as an irrational iinifon/iilarian is to get rid 

 of my attack in a very simple way. Surely some of his scholars 

 or some of his subordinates will have a word to say for their late 

 chief, and, if they cannot maintain his position, will offer 

 some alternative. To the great mass of scientific men who are 

 not geologists, teaching froaa such a source is naturally accepted 

 as authoritative. 



To pass on, however. Yo'.ir c itic speaks of my invoking a 

 series of catastrophes to explain the difficulties surrounding the 

 extinction of the mammoth. This is most inexplicable to me, 

 and points to his not having read my book at all, which was 

 neither fair to you nor me. My book is a perpetual protest 

 against such a series of catastrophes, and an arguinent in favour 

 of one catastrophe only. May I quote one statement among 

 others ? 



" If we are to summon some normal cause not now operating 

 for these facts, it certainly seems mire reasonable that, with 

 effects so completely alike over such a wide area we should 

 .summon otie catne, and not several, and attribute the aberrant 

 conditions showing so much uniformity to some uniform im- 

 pulse. Here, again, the burden of proof is upon those who 

 deny this view, and treat the remains not as the result of 

 some widespread catastrophe, but as evidence of as many cata- 

 strophes as there are skeletons, 



" It would be as unreasonable to invoke a separate storm and 

 a separate date for the death of each one of the myriads of 

 razor-bills and guillemots that strewed the western coasts of 

 Britain on a fatal occasion a few years ago, and whose remains 

 were all fresh and in the same condition, as to do the same for 

 the myriads of fresh skeletons of mammoths, rhinoceroses, 

 bisons, &c., in Siberia or in Europe, These debris of a former 

 world have every sign that they formed parts of a contempora- 

 neous fauna destroyed at one time, and are not the wreckage of 

 centuries of deaths." 



I now come to what is more important ; namely, the theory 

 which your critic resuscitates, after it has been given up by all 

 the Russian inquirers, save one, for many decades — namely, the 

 notion that the mammoths have been floated by the rivers from 

 some undefined land and buried by river action, where they are 

 now found. 



Dr. Bunge, who has re:ently returned fnm a protracted 

 residence on the Lower Lena, and has described his researches 



in detail before the St. Petersburg Academy, tells us expressly 

 that mammoth remains are found very seldom indeed in the delta 

 of the Lena, and very seldom also near that river. It is in the 

 higher land separating the great rivers that the remains abound, 

 and especially, as Wrangell and others showed long ago, and 

 as Bunge has recently confirmed, in the mounds and low"hills of 

 the tundra. When found near rivers, it is near the short rivers, 

 like those of North- Eastern Siberia, or near the head streams 

 of the Lena, the Yjenissei, &c., which could not float such 

 carcasses. 



In the next place. Northern Siberia is not a country of moun- 

 tains and small valleys, but a vast, continuous nearly level 

 waste covered with moss, called a tundra, diversified by mounds 

 and rounded hillocks, and threaded here and there by rivers 

 running in deep channels — rivers which are frozen fast for 

 a large part of the year. 



When the late spring conies, and the ice in the upper reaches 

 melts, while that lower down is still locked fast, there is no doubt 

 a considerable flood in the estuarine parts of the Obi and other 

 rivers, but this is temporary and transient, and it only covers 

 the low lands where mammoth remains are most infrequent. It 

 never covers and cannot cover the higher land. There is not 

 supply of water to do it. To cover the higher points where 

 the mammoth and other remains abound would require such 

 a supply as would put the whole northern part of the con- 

 tinent under water, and thus destroy all animal life there eveiy 

 spring flood. Even if we could postulate river floods of this 

 kind as I have shown, quoting a most experienced geologist, 

 Schmidt, the Siberian rivers deposit no warp that could cover 

 in the mammoths as they are found covered in, by deep beds of 

 clay and gravel, not when lying on their sides only, but when 

 standing upright, as they have several times been found. They 

 must have been covered in by more than two yards of deposit 

 also in a single year in all parts of Siberia, sinc2 the ground 

 melts to that depth in the summer, which melting would destroy 

 iheir soft parts. Appeals to river- floods therefore involve 

 appeals to transcendental causes which are obsolete in other 

 sciences than geology. 



Lastly, why is this river portage invoked at all ? We have not 

 merely the mammoth carcasses to account for, but the trees found 

 with these great beasts slill rooted, and the land and freshwater 

 shelL showing a different climate when he lived. * 



Where are we to bring these debris of a former life ft om? 

 We cannot go outside of Siberia ; for the mammoth, so far as we 

 know, has never been found in Asia outside that province. We 

 cannot bring the mammoths found in Kamchatka, and the 

 peninsula of the Chukchi, and the Liachov Islands (which are 

 150 miles from the mainland), from Central Siberia. Again the 

 remains are very infrequent there compared with their abundance 

 further north, while the mammo'hs from the north and south of 

 Siberia can be discriminated. There is no sign of rolling on the 

 bones, and the epiphyses are still attached. Evidence of every kind 

 converges therefore upon the conclusion that the mammoths lived 

 and died where their remains are found, and the problem that has 

 to be faced is, how they were exterminated simultaneously from 

 the Obi to Bering Straits, of all ages and sizes, and mixed with 

 various incongruous beasts ; how they were buried in the 

 hillocks and high ground under vast, undisturbed, and continuous 

 beds of gravel and clay ; and how, lastly, their flesh was subse- 

 quently preserved. If all this can be explained without some 

 appeal to the forces I have invoked, then otte factor out of many 

 in my argument can be answered. If not, it is no use going to 

 Wonderland for hypotheses which only arouse ridicule among 

 students of those sciences which claim induction for their basis. 

 I am most anxious for an answer. Henry H. Howorth. 

 Bentcliffe, Eccles. 



Is Hail so formed ? 



I NOTlCEn here yesterdiy a curious phenomenon — one that 

 has not before come under my observation. 



I was standing under a pine-tree that was laden with moisture 

 from the foggy atmosphere ; drops were falling to the ground 

 from the branches, but what struck me was the fact that although 

 most of the drops reached the ground in a liquid state, some of 

 them were converted in their descent mio pellets of ice. 



It was very cold, but I had no reliable means of ascertaining 

 the temperature at the time ; it could not, however, have been 

 far off freezing-point. 



