OF CREATION. oil 



of trees ; and herds of these gigantic quadrupeds may 

 possibly have migrated northwards in warm weather 

 to the limits of arboreal vegetation, where from time 

 to time individuals were buried either alive, or soon 

 after death, in an icy shroud, and where the bones 

 of those who died from natural or violent causes 

 were also buried and preserved in the frozen gravel. 



Twenty years before the elephant just described 

 was obtained from its icy grave, another carcase, also 

 of a gigantic thick-skinned animal, was found half- 

 buried in frozen sand on the shores of the same icy 

 seas. This animal was nearly twelve feet long ; its 

 body was clothed with skin, which resembled leather, 

 but was so far decomposed that the discoverers were 

 unable to bring away more than the head and feet. 

 The skin of the head was found to have preserved all 

 its exterior structure, and one could see upon it many 

 short hairs. The eye-lids and eye-lashes had not en- 

 tirely fallen into decay; a substance existed in the 

 cavity of the skull, and beneath the skin were, in 

 some places, the remains of the putrified flesh. It 

 was known at once to be a rhinoceros, by the situa- 

 tion of the horn and the fold of the integument which 

 surrounded it : the horn itself was absent. 



In this example the individual belonged to a spe- 

 cies exceedingly different in many respects, especially 

 in the form of the head, from the only known existing 

 species of rhinoceros, and the interest is even greater 

 than in the former case, because the differences are 

 more striking. The hair (a characteristic part) was 

 short on the face, and strongly planted in pores of the 

 skin; it grew there in tufts, was of a rigid texture 

 and grey colour, with here and there a black hair 



