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 



Mammoth 



With 



temperate 



eographical range of the 



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- 



\ the northern 



dant remains, in showing that, like the Reindee 

 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 brief 

 experience of the progress and duration of species within the his- 

 torical period, is surely insufficient to justify, in every case of ex- 

 tinction, the verdict of violent death. With re 



Mammalia 



Australian 



In the extreme points of Lapland, in 70° north latitude, the pines attain the 

 height of sixty feet; and at Enontekessi, in Lapland, in 63° 30' north latitat 

 von Buch found corn, orchards, and a rich vegetation at an elevation of 1356 feet 



Lindley, Intr. to Botany, pp. 435, 490. 



