140 EXTINCT SPECIES. 



period of historic times. In the year 1843, the season being 

 warmer than usual, a mass of Siberian ice thawed, and, in 

 thawing, untombed one of these animals, perfect in all re- 

 spects, even to the skin and hair. The flesh of this creature 

 furnished repast to wolves and bears, so little alteration had it 

 undergone. Another mastodon was disentombed on the Tas, 

 between the Obi and Yenesei, near the Arctic circle, about 

 lat. 66 30' N., with some parts of its flesh in so perfect a 

 state, that the bulb of the eye now exists preserved in the 

 Moscow museum. Another adult carcass, accompanied by an 

 individual of the same species, was found in 1843, in lat. 75 

 15' N., near the river Taimyr, the flesh being decayed. Asso- 

 ciated with it, Middendorf observed the trunk of a larch tree 

 (pinus larix), the same wood that now grows in the same 

 neighbourhood abundantly. 



It is no part of my intention to discuss the causes of 

 mammoth extinction. This result has assuredly not been 

 caused by any onslaught of the destroyer man. The Siberian 

 wilds are scantily populated now, and it has never been sug- 

 gested that at any anterior period their human denizens were 

 more plentiful. Nature often establishes the balance of her 

 organic life through a series of agencies so abstrusely refined, 

 and acting, besides, over so long a period, that they altogether 

 escape man's cognisance. 



The believer in the God of nature's adaptation of means 

 to ends will see no reason to make an exception in animal 

 species to what is demonstrated by examples in so many other 

 cases to be a general law. The dogma, that no general law 

 is without exceptions though one to which implicit credence 

 has been given may nevertheless be devoid of the univer- 

 sality commonly imputed. On the contrary, the application 

 of this dogma may extend over a very narrow field ; may be 

 only referable to the codifications, artificial and wholly con- 

 ventional, which mankind for their convenience establish, and 

 under a false impression elevate to the position of laws. 



