NOTE ON ELEPHAS MERlDIONALIS. 9 



Italy, except in the north, near Turin ; it touched the Mediterranean 

 basin at Ventimiglia, the present frontier of France and Italy, and 

 has been reported from the neighbourhood of Rome. It crossed 

 the mountains of Northern Europe, and its remains have been 

 found 70 degrees north latitude, in the Valleys of the Obi, of the 

 Lena, and of the Tenisei. Its absence from Sweden, Finland, and 

 Denmark may be accounted for by a submergence of those 

 countries during the ice-age. A molar, and one only, has been met 

 with in Denmark. Mammoth remains are found in the whole of 

 Central Europe from Great Britain to the Caspian Sea and China. 

 Its remains have been found in North America from Behring's 

 Straits to Texas. It is distinguished from the rest of the family 

 by the plates of the molars being more numerous and narrower, 

 the enamel extremely thin, and scarcely crimped. 



Mr. Leith Adams shews that the number of ridges of each tooth, 

 especially those at the posterior end of the series, is subject to 

 every kind of variation, also in the number of plates of which each 

 tooth is composed, but the thickness of the enamel varies so much 

 as to have given rise to a distinction between a thick-plated and a 

 thin-plated variety; the former prevail mostly in Italy, the latter in 

 Siberia and Northern Europe, including the British Isles. 



There are many instances on record from Siberia of the soft por- 

 tions of the Mammoth having been found preserved as fresh as if it 

 had died yesterday. The date of the earliest record is 1692-95. In 

 Lorenz Lange's Travels, 1721, we are told how the Russian 

 prisoners who were banished to Siberia obtained a livelihood by 

 turning snuff-boxes out of Mammoth's teeth. Sangtschof, who 

 wrote in 1887 a description of his journey through Siberia, says 

 the river at Alaseya had washed out of its sandy banks the 

 skeleton of a gigantic animal, apparently about the size of an 

 elephant. It stood in an upright position and retained its skin. 

 In 1806 Adams heard that a Mammoth, with its flesh, skin, and 

 hair intact, had been found on the banks of the Lena, in latitude 

 70 degrees north, as early as 1801 ; three years after, in 1804, 

 Schumakof, a Tungus chief, took away the tusks and bartered them 



