492 H. H. Howorth—The Mammoth in Siberia. 
occurred in the northern hemisphere. So interesting, and so 
valuable is it, that it is strange that not more has been written about 
it in English literature, and that most writers who have treated of 
the latest series of deposits have contented themselves with repeat- 
ing over and over again the famous story of the Mammoth’s carcase 
described by Adams, and have not gone further afield. 
Before we consider some of the problems which are elucidated by 
the discovery of these carcases, we have thought that it would not 
be ungrateful to the readers of the Guonocican Magazine to collect 
together such notices as may be found of the various places where 
and occasions on which the soft parts of the great pachyderms 
have been discovered, especially laying under contribution Baer’s 
famous paper, published in the Memoirs of the St. Petersburgh 
Academy, which, however, was by no means a complete notice, and 
adding to it a more casual summary of the distribution of the bones 
as found separate from the soft parts in various localities in Siberia. 
The existence of remains of Mammoths preserved with their flesh 
intact was known in Europe as early as the seventeenth century. 
Witsen, in his work, Noord en Oost Tartarye, edition 1694, p. 412, 
cites the finding of many Mammoths’ teeth in Siberia, and mentions 
that numbers of people were engaged in searching for them. He 
also says that occasionally whole Mammoths were found, which 
were of a brownish colour, and emitted a great.stench. Witsen was 
not alone. Isbrand Ides, who was sent as an envoy from Peter the 
Great to China in 1692—1695, met on his way through Siberia a 
man who was engaged every year in collecting fossil ivory, and who 
told him he had once seen the head of a Mammoth projecting from 
the frozen ground, which, with the help of some companions, he 
cut off. The inside of the head had decayed, but he secured the 
teeth, which he says were placed before his mouth like those of an 
elephant. He also took some bones out of its head, and cut off a 
foot of the girth of a man, of which he took a portion to Trugan 
(i.e. Turuchansk). The bones of the head were somewhat red, as if 
coloured with blood. Isbrand Ides knew these elephants were found’ 
imbedded in the frozen banks of the rivers, and he reports that the 
Russians ascribed them to the Noachian deluge, a view in which he 
concurred (Isbrand Ides’ Travels, pp. 25, 26). 
Lawrence Lange, who went as an envoy to China in 1715, after 
speaking of the stories of the Mammoth (which he calls the 
Mamant or Behemoth) living under ground, goes on to say that 
what convinced him most that its bones were those of a beast which 
still existed was that several people worthy of credit had assured 
him they had seen the horns (sic), skulls and bodies of the animal 
with flesh and blood still remaining, adding that if it were thought 
necessary it would be easy without much difficulty to collect together 
a perfect skeleton (Journal de Laurent Lange, in Nouveaux 
Memoires sur l’etat present de la Grande Russie ou Moscovie, vol. . 
il. pp, 110, 111). 
Miiller, the author of the famous collections on Russian history, 
who wrote in the first half of the last century, in his Memoir on the 
