18 Distribution, Food and Climate of the Mammoth. 
heat of that brief season, the Mammoths would be arrested in 
their northern progress by a condition to which the Reindeer and 
Musk Ox are not subject, viz. the limits of arboreal vegetation, 
which, however, as represented by the dominating shrubs of Po- 
lar lands, would allow them to reach the seventieth degree of 
latitude.* But, with this limitation, if the physiological infer- 
ences regarding the food of the Mammoth from the structure of 
its teeth be adequately appreciated and connected with those 
which may be legitimately deduced from the ascertained nature 
of its integument, the necessity of recurring to the forces of 
mighty rivers hurrying along a carcass through a devious course, 
extending through an entire degree of latitude, in order to ac- 
count for its ultimate entombment in ice, whilst so little decom- 
posed as to have retained the cuticle and hair, will disappear. 
And it can no longer be regarded as impossible for herds of Mam- 
moth to have obtained subsistence in a country like the southern 
part of Siberia where trees abound, notwithstanding it is covered 
during a great part of the year with snow, seeing that the leafless 
state of such trees during even a long and severe Siberian winter, 
would not necessarily unfit their branches for yielding sustenance 
to the well-clothed Mammoth. 
With regard to the extension of the geographical range of the 
Elephas primigenius into temperate latitudes, the distribution of its 
fossil remains, teaches that it reached the fortieth degree north of 
the equator. History, in like manner, records that the Reindeer 
had formerly a more extensive distribution in the temperate lati 
tudes of Europe than it now enjoys. The hairy covering of the 
Mammoth concurs, however, with the localities of its most abun- 
dant remains, in showing that, like the Reindeer, the northern 
extreme of the temperate zone was its metropolis. 
Attempts have been made to account for the extinction of the 
race of northern Elephants, by alterations in the climate of their 
hemisphere, or by violent geological catastrophes, and the like 
extraneous physical causes. When we seek to apply the same 
hypothesis to explain the apparently contemporaneous extinction 
of the gigantic leaf-eating Megatherian of South America, the 
geological phenomena of that continent appear to negative the 
occurrence of such destructive changes. Our comparatively bri 
experience of the progress and duration of species within the his- 
torical period, is surely insufficient to justify, in every case of &X- 
tinction, the verdict of violent death. With regard to many © 
the larger Mammalia, especially those which have passed away 
from the American and Australian continents, the absence of sufli- 
* In the extreme points of Lapland, in 70° north latitude, the pines atsein' 
height of sixty feet; and at Enontekessi, in Lapland, in 68° 30! north periaren 
von Buch found corn, orchards, and a rich vegetation at an elevation of 1356 
above the sea.—Lindley, Intr. to Botany, pp. 435, 490. 
