500 H. H. Howorth—The Mammoth in Siberia. 
in the most eastern of these islands he had found ten Mammoths’ 
tusks standing out of the ground in the space of a verst. Heden- 
strom and Samukof report these islands, especially Kotelnoi, as 
abounding in heads of Sheep, Cattle, and Horses. ‘The place has 
unfortunately not been visited by a naturalist, so that it is im- 
possible to say whether these Sheeps’ heads belong to the Siberian 
Mountain Sheep, Ovis nivicola, or to the Musk Ox, and whether the 
so-called Horses’ skulls may not be those of Rhinoceroses. There 
are also large heaps of wood lying so thickly that the Russians call 
them wood hills. So plentiful are the Elephant remains, that in 
1821 an ivory merchant from Irkutsk collected 20,000 pounds of 
elephant ivory from the islands of New Siberia. Samukof himself, 
in 1805, collected 250 poods, or 10,000 pounds, of this ivory, and 
the trade goes on regularly (Baer, op. cit. pp. 253, 204). 
The same report as to the abundance of these remains comes from 
other parts of the northern coast of Siberia. 
The branches of the two rivers Aniuj, tributaries of the Kolyma, 
are, according to Maljuschkin, rich in fossil bones. The bones 
of the carcase, other than the tusks, when they still retain a 
quantity of fatty matter, are used for fuel or for other domestic pur- 
poses. The supply of fossil ivory drawn from northern Siberia 
during the last two centuries must have been enormous, and still 
gives no signs of waning. From 1825 to 1831 there was never, 
according to Middendorf, less than 1500 poods of fossil ivory sold 
at Yakutsk; one year it reached 2000 poods. From 80 to 100 at 
Turukhansk, and 75 to 100 at Obdorsk. The number of individual 
Mammoths deposited may be guessed from the fact that many of 
these northern tusks are small, and weigh only about three poods, 
or 150 pounds each. 
West of the Lena the Mammoth occurs alsc in great quantities. 
Middendorf found its remains on the Taimyr peninsula. Gmelin 
found those of a Rhinoceros on the new Tunguska. 
Pallas and others have reported Mammoths’ remains as found in 
the valleys of the Yenissei, the Augara, the Chalaiya, the Irtish, the 
Tom, the Tobol, the Ob, the Alei, in the country of the Barabinski, 
the banks of the Volga, and the Ural, ete. They are, in fact, found 
distributed all over Siberia from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific. 
They are not, however, distributed equally over Siberia, but, as 
Wrangell says, form immense local accumulations, which become 
both richer and more extensive the further one advances to the 
north, being found in the greatest abundance in the islands of the 
Leachof archipelago, more sparingly on the main land, and but 
rarely in Southern Siberia (Wrangell, 185, note). 
The presence of the remains of these vast animals in such 
abundance in a country so sterile, and so given up to the hardest 
conditions of climate, etc., where there is now in winter the barest 
sustenance for the raven and the snowy owl, and they alone, has 
ever been a subject of marvel and surprise, has given rise to many 
theories and many opinions. These are well worth sifting more 
closely than they have hitherto been, for they involve answers to 
