134 Things not generally Known. 



of the lion) have been found so perfectly unbroken and un- 

 worn, in fine gravel (as at Market Weigh ton), that few persons 

 would be disposed to deny that such feline and other animals 

 once roamed over the British isles, as well as other European 

 countries. Why, then, is it improbable that large elephants, 

 with a peculiarly thick integument, a close coating of wool, 

 and much long shaggy hair, should have been the occupants 

 of wide tracts of Northern Europe and Asia? This coating, 

 Dr. Fleming has well remarked, was probably as impenetrable 

 to rain and cold as that of the monster ox of the polar circle. 

 Such is the opinion of Sir Roderick Murchison, who thus ac- 

 counts for the disappearance of the mammoths from Britain : 



When we turn from the great Siberian continent, which, anterior to 

 its elevation, was the chief abode of the mammoths, and look to the 

 other parts of Europe, where their remains also occur, how remarkable 

 is it that we find the number of these creatures to be justly proportion- 

 ate to the magnitude of the ancient masses of land which the labours 

 of geologists have denned ! Take the British isles, for example, and let 

 all their low, recently elevated districts be submerged ; let, in short, 

 England be viewed as the comparatively small island she was when the 

 ancient estuary of the Thames, including the plains of Hyde Park, 

 Chelsea, Hounslow, and Uxbridge, were under the water ; when the 

 Severn extended far into the heart of the kingdom, and large eastern 

 tracts of the island were submerged, and there will then remain but 

 moderately-sized feeding-grounds for the great quadrupeds whose bones 

 are found in the gravel of the adjacent rivers and estuaries. 



This limited area of subsistence could necessarily only keep 

 Tip a small stock of such animals ; and, just as we might ex- 

 pect, the remains of British mammoths occur in very small 

 numbers indeed, when compared with those of the great char- 

 nel-houses of Siberia, into which their bones had been carried 

 down through countless ages from the largest mass of surface 

 which geological inquiries have yet shown to have been dry 

 land during that epoch. 



The remains of the mammoth, says Professor Owen, have 

 been found in all, or almost all, the counties of England. Off 

 the coast of Norfolk they are met with in vast abundance. 

 The fishermen who go to catch turbot between the mouth of 

 the Thames and the Dutch coast constantly get their nets en- 

 tangled in the tusks of the mammoth. A collection of tusks 

 and other remains, obtained in this way, is to be seen at Rams- 

 gate. In North America, this gigantic extinct elephant must 

 have been very common ; and a large portion of the ivory 

 which supplies the markets of Europe is derived from the vast 

 mammoth graveyards of Siberia. 



The mammoth ranged at least as far north as 60. There 

 is no doubt that, at the present day, many specimens of the 

 musk-ox are annually becoming imbedded in the mud and ice 

 of the North- American rivers. 



