NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY 



first authoritative description of the hairy elephant, 

 named by Cuvier the mammoth, the remains of which 

 had been found embedded in a mass of ice in Siberia in 

 1802, so wonderfully preserved that the dogs of the 

 Tungusian fishermen actually ate its flesh. Bones of 

 the same species had been found in Siberia several 

 years before by the naturalist Pallas, who had also 

 found the carcass of a rhinoceros there, frozen in a 

 mud-bank ; but no one then suspected that these were 

 members of an extinct population they were sup- 

 posed to be merely transported relics of the flood. 



Cuvier, on the other hand, asserted that these and the 

 other creatures he described had lived and died in the 

 region where their remains were found, and that most 

 of them have no living representatives upon the globe. 

 This, to be sure, was nothing more than William Smith 

 had tried all along to establish regarding lower forms of 

 life ; but flesh and blood monsters appeal to the imagina- 

 tion in a way quite beyond the power of mere shells ; 

 so the announcement of Cuvier 's discoveries aroused 

 the interest of the entire world, and the Ossements 

 Fossiles was accorded a popular reception seldom 

 given a work of technical science a reception in 

 which the enthusiastic approval of progressive geolo- 

 gists was mingled with the bitter protests of the con- 

 servatives. 



" Naturalists certainly have neither explored all the 

 continents," said Cuvier, " nor do they as yet even know 

 all the quadrupeds of those parts which have been ex- 

 plored. New species of this class are discovered from 

 time to time; and those who have not examined with 



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