756 GEOLOGY. 



clothed with long thick hair, as if adapted to sustain a Siberian temperature. Tlje hair 

 was particularly abundant on the limbs, while the existing species are totally deficient of 

 it in these parts. Both with reference to the fossil elephants and rhinoceroses, no doubt 

 can be entertained, that in the time of their living existence they were the inhabitants of 

 the countries where their bones are found imbedded ; but it is extremely difficult to come 

 to any satisfactory conclusion respecting the climate of the northern latitudes coincident 

 with their era of life. On the one hand, the ice-entombed carcases, and their hair cloth- 

 ing, indicate a temperature as rigorous in those regions as at the present period. On the 

 other hand, the adaptation of the extant genera to tropical warmth the occurrence of 

 fossil crocodilians, tortoises, shells, and vegetables in the far north, allied in structure to 

 those that are now peculiar to hot climates and the difficulty of large animals finding 

 subsistence these are considerations which seem to require the hypothesis of a milder 

 contemporaneous physical climate. It is true that the larger herbivorous quadrupeds are 

 not now located where a luxuriant vegetation exists, the elephants and rhinoceroses of 

 South Africa inhabiting a barren country ; but their present territory cannot be com- 

 pared with the coasts of the Arctic Ocean, which are productive of little more than moss 

 and lichens, and are annually covered for months with impenetrable ice and snow. Some 

 have supposed, that as many modern animals migrate for instance, the musk ox and 

 reindeer of Melville Island so the Siberian mammoths and rhinoceroses may have 

 periodically departed southward at the approach of winter, to avoid the inclemency of 

 the season and to obtain food ; but such huge and unwieldy quadrupeds seem evidently 

 unfitted for extensive locomotion, while to their contemporary crocodiles and tortoises 

 long migrations were next to impossible. But if we embrace the idea of a warmer 

 climate prevailing in the northern regions when these animals tenanted them, it is neces- 

 sary to suppose an immediate reduction of the temperature to have been coincident with 

 their destruction one of the physical events accompanying the great inundation which 

 annihilated their races ; for had not the mammoth been at once frozen and enclosed in its 

 icy sepulchre, the carcase must have perished* from the decomposing action of the 

 elements. The subject is beset with difficulties, whatever view is taken of it, which defy 

 intelligence to remove. 



Hippopotamus. The living river-horse, occasionally found not less than seventeen 

 feet long, fifteen in circumference, and seven in height, was formerly known in the 

 lower regions of the Nile, and now inhabits the Ethiopic and Abyssinian lakes, with 

 many of the great African rivers, to which it appears to be exclusively confined. If not 

 the Behemoth of sacred literature, it is certain that no existing creature answers so well 

 to the description : 



" Come behold Behemoth, whom I have created as well as thyself! 



He feedeth on grass like the ox : 



Bars of brass are his bones ; 



His joints like masses of iron : 



He is the chief of the ways of God. 



Under the shady trees he reposeth ; 



In the covert of the reeds and the ooze : 



While they overshadow him, the shady trees tremble ; 



The willows of the river, while they surround him. 



If the stream rage, he recoileth not ; 



He is unmoved, though Jordan rush against his mouth." 



^ The fossil bones of hippopotami of several species, repeatedly met with in England, 

 France, Germany, and especially Italy, show that these animals were formerly tenants 

 of the northern hemisphere, and had a much wider geographical range than at present. 

 In the years 1809 and 1810 Cuvier found in the museum of Florence, and in the 



