268 PROBOSC1DIA. 



huge grinders enabling them to pound the tough vege- 

 table tissue and fit it for deglutition. No doubt the foliage 

 is the most tempting, as it is the most succulent part of 

 the boughs devoured ; but the relation of the complex 

 molars to the comminution of the coarser vegetable sub- 

 stance is unmistakeable. Now, if we find in an extinct 

 Elephant the same peculiar principle of construction in the 

 molar teeth, but with augmented complexity, arising from 

 a greater number of the triturating plates and a greater 

 proportion of the dense enamel, the inference is plain that 

 the ligneous fibre must have entered in a larger proportion 

 into the food of such extinct species. Forests of hardy 

 trees and shrubs still grow upon the frozen soil of Siberia, 

 and skirt the banks of the Lena as far north as latitude 

 60. In Europe arboreal vegetation extends ten degrees 

 nearer the pole, and the dental organization of the Mam- 

 moth proves that it might have derived subsistence from 

 the leafless branches of trees, in regions covered during a 

 great part of the year with snow. 



We may therefore safely infer, from physiological 

 grounds, that the Mammoth would have found the re- 

 quisite means of subsistence at the present day, and at all 

 seasons, in the sixtieth parallel of latitude ; and, relying 

 on the body of evidence adduced by Mr. Lyell, in proof of 

 increased severity in the climate of the northern hemi- 

 sphere, we may assume that the Mammoth habitually fre- 

 quented still higher latitudes at the period of its actual 

 existence. " It has been suggested," observes the same 

 philosophic writer, "that, as in our own times, the northern 

 animals migrate, so the Siberian Elephant and Rhinoceros 

 may have wandered towards the north in summer." In 

 making such excursions during the heat of that brief 

 season, the Mammoths would be arrested in their northern 



