306 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



of cold, by checking and for the time preventing 

 decomposition, enables even the muscular tissue to be 

 retained unaltered, so that we have occasionally the 

 skeleton clothed with flesh and skin, as if the animal 

 had died but yesterday, and as if we could yet con- 

 sider it as belonging to a living race. It is singular 

 thus to find the most perfect monuments of past 

 ages entombed in ice, buried in the silent sepulchre 

 before death had altered a single character of struc- 

 ture, and now from time to time disinterred and 

 seized as prey by the present denizens of those 

 climates, the wolves, the dogs, the foxes, and the 

 bears, or rescued only from the fangs of such assail- 

 ants to be the subject of wondering examination by 

 man their successor, after countless years, in the 

 possession of the earth. 



There cannot be a question that many of the larger 

 animals whose remains occur in the gravel of England 

 once ranged over the northern continent as far as 

 the 130th degree of east longitude, and were enabled 

 to live either constantly or migrating southwards 

 during the long winter and returning again in the 

 summer, as far north as the 73rd or 74th degree of 

 latitude. Among the species thus known may be 

 mentioned an elephant and a rhinoceros, but many 

 others certainly accompanied these. 



It will be interesting to consider the condition of 

 animals thus embalmed, and the adaptation they ex- 

 hibit to the circumstances under which they existed ; 

 but, before describing the animals and the state in 

 which they were found, it is important to record the 

 fact, that in the same districts, and beyond the 75th 

 degree of latitude, large and complete birch-trees are 



