496 H.. . Howorth—The Mammoth in Siberia. 
form however, and it was clear the flesh had decayed away on_ the 
spot, from there being found there two inches thick of a dark 
brown mud, which surrounded the bones, which had a strong 
ammoniacal smell, and was clearly a decayed animal substance. 
The banks of the river were about six fathoms high, and consisted 
of coarse sand containing boulders of various kinds of stone from 
the size of a nut to that of a man’s head. Some of these boulders 
were taken home by Middendorf and were classed by Keyserling 
as granite, white felspar, gneiss containing garnets, black mica 
slate, and a peculiar breccia formed of pieces of anthracite welded 
together by white carbonate of lime. Half-way up the cliff in the 
otherwise unstratified sand, was a layer an inch thick of fine-grained 
peat mixed with coarser sand. Higher up, and five to seven feet 
below the surface, lay the remains of the Mammoth in a layer of 
sand mixed with clay. The boulders did not apparently reach so 
high. The animal lay on its left side (Baer, op. cit. 285). 
A Mammoth was found some time between 1840 and 1850 in 
the circle of Yakutsk. It was mentioned in a notice by Herr 
Schtschukin, who had lived long in Yakutsk, and was afterwards 
in correspondence with the place. It was probably the same animal 
of which a foot is preserved at Irkutsk, and was mentioned by 
Schrenck. It was well preserved when found, and the animal had 
a mane of long hair reaching from the neck to the tail. Like most 
of the others it was found in the bank of the river, which had 
been undermined by floods. The Archbishop of Yaroslaf reported 
that the animal had been found by a missionary named Khitrof, 
who reported that it had a shaggy mane, and that its head was 
covered with hair; remains of its food between its teeth consisted 
of twigs of trees (Bull. St. Pet. Acad. vol. x. pp. 118, 362). It 
seems this Mammoth was found on the banks of the Kolyma 
(id. 362). 
Baer was told by the doctor, Alexander Golubef, who had practised 
long in Yakutsk, that about 1860 or 1862 the Yakuts had found 
a huge beast covered with skin on the banks of the Wiljui, where 
it falls into the Lena, which they reported to the Yakutsk merchant, 
Ivan Platonovitch Kolessof. 
A Yurak, who was looking for his reindeer on the Tundra, near 
the bay of Tas, noticed projecting from the ground a horn (so they 
call the Mammoths’ tusks found in Siberia). In order to secure 
this he scraped away as much as he could of the earth, and disclosed 
the head of a great beast. Having drawn or broken off the tooth, 
he detached also a portion of the hide as evidence, which he gave 
to the village elder of Dudinsk, Athanasius Koschkarof, who passed 
it on to the overseer, Sotnikof, who showed it to Ivan Maksimof, an 
engineer on one of the steamers on the Yenissei, who again com- 
municated the important news to M. Stephen Gulayef, and he to 
the Russian naturalist, K. E. von Baer. The news was communi- 
cated in a letter from Karl Maximovitch to Stephen Gulayef, dated 
Barnaul, 30th November, 1865 (Bull. St. Pet. Acad. x. 230-234). 
On the receipt of this news, the Imperial Academy nominated 
