162 Sir H. H. Howorth—The True Horizon of the Mammoth. 
Mammoth carcases are not found in this ice but in frozen gravel and 
mud has also been known for a long time, and the whole question is 
discussed at some length in a part of my Mammoth book, which 
Mr. Stirrup might, I think, have profitably consulted. 
That the ice in question is palzocrysticice dating from Pleistocene 
times is no doubt a new suggestion, at least, as far as I know, but 
what evidence there is of this I altogether fail to see. Those who 
have hitherto written on the subject have explained these ice-beds 
very rationally. The ground in Northern Siberia is permanently 
frozen at a depth of a few feet from the surface. The stratum 
thus frozen prevents a complete drainage of the surface water, which, 
percolating through the ground, reaches the frozen layer cannot get 
away and presently becomes itself frozen. Thus a thin bed of ice is 
formed which gradually grows in thickness between the permanently 
frozen subsoil and that part of it which is thawed every year. This 
is the natural consequence of the present climate of Siberia. When 
the Mammoth and its companions lived there and lived, as I think 
I have elsewhere proved, as far north-as the Bear Islands, the 
climate must have been very different. Not only was the country 
covered with forests but the land-shells which have been found with 
the remains of these forests with Mammoth bones, are incompatible 
with the existence during the Mammoth age of permanently frozen 
soil in Siberia. This I have urged at some length in the book 
already quoted. It is for Mr. Stirrup, who has apparently applied 
himself to these problems for the first time quite recently, to face 
this dilemma; I think he ought to have faced it before he used 
flippant phrases about such a master of observation and logic as 
Cuvier. I am bound to say I cannot see that he has in the slightest 
degree qualified the conclusion of the great French philosopher and 
naturalist, a conclusion endorsed in more recent times by two such 
authorities as D’Archiac and De Lapparent. 
Turning to the researches of M. T’chernyschew, I am equally at 
a loss to know what conclusion Mr. Stirrup would base them upon. 
That the Tundras of North-Eastern Europe and of Siberia are under- 
laid by gravels, is a very elementary fact; they have been described 
by several explorers and notably by Middendorff and Schmidt. 
These gravels consist of water-rolled local pebbles, some of which 
are doubtless scratched as they are in all gravels, but so far as the 
evidence before me, and it is very considerable, goes, there is not 
a trace in them of erratics, of boulders with flat sides and of the other 
real footmarks of glacial action; nay, more, the experienced geolo- 
gists like Nordenskiold, Von Cotta, and others, who have carefully 
examined this very problem on the ground, are agreed that no traces 
of an Ice Age, except the one in progress now exist in Siberia, 
neither in the mountains nor in the plains. Here, again Mr. Stirrup 
has surely, like the Spanish Knight, been tilting at a windmill. 
Again, he bids me remember that in America the Mammoth and 
the Mastodon occur in the superficial deposits. Of course they do, 
but what has this to do with the question. There are many places 
within easy reach of Manchester where mountain limestone shells 
