ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS. 261 



surfaces are generally entire, and sometimes the bones are 

 found, like that in the Ashmolean Museum, in a remark- 

 able state of integrity. 



General Geographical Distribution, and probable Food and 

 Climate of the Mammoth. 



The remains of the Mammoth occur on the Continent, 

 as in England, in the superficial deposits of sand, gravel, 

 and loam, which are strewed over all parts of Europe ; 

 and they are found in still greater abundance in the same 

 formations of Asia, especially in the higher latitudes, where 

 the soil which forms their matrix is perennially frozen. * 

 Remains of the Mammoth have been found in great abun- 

 dance in the cliffs of frozen mud on the east side of 

 Behring's Straits, in Eschscholtz's Bay, in Russian America, 

 lat. 66 N.lat. ; and they have been traced, but in scantier 

 quantities, as far south as the States of Ohio, Kentucky, 

 Missouri, and South Carolina. But no authentic relics of 

 the Elephas primigenius have yet been discovered in tro- 

 pical latitudes,-f- or m an j P art f * ne southern hemisphere. 

 It would thus appear that the primeval Elephants for- 

 merly ranged over the whole northern hemisphere of the 

 globe, from the 40th to the 60th, and possibly to near the 

 70th degree of latitude. Here, at least, at the mouth of 

 the River Lena, the carcass of a Mammoth has been dis- 

 covered, preserved entire, in the icy cliffs and frozen soil of 



* Hedenstrom, in his ' Survey of the Laechow Islands ' on the north-eastern 

 coast of Siberia, remarks that the first of these islands is little more than one 

 mass of these bones ; and that although the Siberian traders have been in the 

 habit of bringing over large cargoes of them (tusks) for upwards of sixty years, 

 yet there appears to be no sensible diminution. 



f- The fossil elephantine remains discovered in India, belong to a species more 

 nearly allied to the Eleplms Indicus. 



