Distribution, Food and Climate of the Mammoth. 13 



Art. II. — General Geological Distribution and probable Food 



and Climate of the Mammoth ; by Prof. R. Owen.* 



Mammoth 



periic 



Europe 



in still greater abundance in the same formations of Asia, especial- 

 ly in the higher latitudes, where the soil which forms their ma- 

 trix is perennially frozen.f Remains of the Mammoth have 

 been found in great abundance in the cliffs of frozen mud on the 

 east side of Behring's Straits, in Eschscholtz's Bay, in Russian 

 America, 66° N. lat. ; and they have been traced, but in scan- 

 tier quantities, as far south as the states of Ohio, Kentucky, Mis- 

 souri, and South Carolina. But no authentic relics of the Ele- 

 phas primigenius have yet been discovered in tropical latitudes,^ 

 or in any part of the southern hemisphere. It would thus appear 

 that the primeval Elephants formerly ranged over the whole nor- 

 thern hemisphere of the globe, from the 40th to the 60th, and 

 possibly to near the 70th degree of latitude. Here at least, at the 

 mouth of the river Lena, the carcass of a Mammoth has been 

 discovered, preserved entire, in the icy cliffs and frozen soil of 

 that coast. To account for this extraordinary phenomenon, geol- 

 ogists and naturalists, biased more or less by the analogy of the 

 existing Elephants, which are restricted to climes where the trees 

 flourish with perennial foliage, have had recourse to the hypothe- 

 sis of a change of climate in the northern hemisphere, either sud- 



den, 



.§ or gradual, and 



land 



* Extracted from Prof. Owen's British Fossil Mammalia, 8vo. London, 1846. 



\ Hedenstrom, in his u Survey of the Laechovv Islands," on the north-eastern 

 coast of Siberia, remarks, " that the first of these islands is little more than one mass 

 of these bones ; and that although the Siberian traders have been in the habit of 

 bringing over large cargoes of them (tusks) for upwards of sixty years, yet there 

 appears to be no sensible diminution/' 



f The fossil elephantine remains discovered in India, belong to a species more 

 nearly allied to the Elephas indicus. 



§ Cuvier, " Discours sur les Revolutions de la Surface du Globe." It is obvi- 

 ous that the frozen Mammoth at the mouth of the Lena, forms one of the strong- 

 est, as well as the most striking, of the celebrated anatomist's aflauraed "proofs 

 that the revolutions on the earth's surface had been sudden." Cuvier affirms th 



the Mammoth could not have maintained its existence in the low temperature of 

 the region where its carcass was arrested, and that at the moment when the beast 

 was destroyed, the land which it trod became glacial. " Cette gclee etemelle n'oc- 

 cupait pas auparavant les lieux oil ils out ete saisis ; car ils n'aiiraient pas pu vivre 

 sous tine pareille temperature. CTceft done le meme instant qui a fait perir les ani- 

 rnaux, et qui a rendu glacial le pays qu'ils habitaient. Cet ev6nement a ete subis, 

 instantan6, sans aucune gradation, &c." — Ossemens Fossil es, 8vo, ed. 1834, torn, i, 

 p. 108. 



|| Lyell, " Principles of Geology," in which the phenomena that had been sup- 

 posed" 4 * to have banished for ever all idea of a slow and gradual revolution,"* were 

 first attempted to be accounted for by the gradual operation of ordinary and exist- 

 ing causes. 



• Jameson's "Cuvier's Theory of the Earth," Svo, p. 16, 1813. 



