HAH. H. Howorth—The Mammoth in Siberia. 5ol 
plants, but on plants still growing in Siberia; when, again, it was 
considered how impossible it would be for carcases of huge animals 
to float down such rocky riversas the Yenissei for hundreds of miles, 
and yet retain not only their flesh but their long hair intact,—opinion 
rapidly changed, and settled down to the view that these animals 
must have lived where their remains are found, and this is largely 
supported by other considerations. The remains are not only found 
on the banks of the long rivers and in the deltas which they form, 
but perhaps even more abundantly on the very short rivers which 
fall into the Arctic Sea, such as those between the Kolyma and the 
Indigerka. They are found also not only on the deltas of these 
rivers, but far away to the north, in the islands of New Siberia, 
beyond the reach of the currents of the small rivers, whose mouths 
are opposite those islands. They are found not only in North 
Central Siberia, where the main arteries of the country flow, but in 
great numbers east of the river Lena, in the vast peninsula of the 
Chukchi, in the country of the Yukagirs, and in Kamskatka, where 
there are no rivers down which they could have floated from more 
temperate regions. Again, the remains are not merely found in the 
beds or on the banks of rivers, but in nearly all parts of the tundra. 
Thus Wrangell says—“The best Mammoth bones as well as the 
greatest number are found at a certain depth below the surface, 
usually in clay hills, more rarely in black earth. ‘The more solid 
the clay, the better the bones are preserved. Experience has also 
shown that more are found in elevations situated near higher hills 
than along the low coast or on the flat tundra” (Wrangell’s Voyage, 
286, note). Again, in another place he tells us these bones are found 
in clay hills, in the tundras, and along the banks of rivers; and he 
mentions how M. Bereslinor set off from Nijni Kolymak to find 
Mammoth bones on the eastern tundra (ib. 168). Again, they are 
found on the banks of rivers running south, like the Volga and the 
Ural, as well as on those of rivers flowing north. Again, if the 
home and habitat of the Mammoths had been further south, 
we should assuredly have found their remains chiefly prevailing 
there, while the contrary is the case; and the further we go north, 
the more abundant they become. Where, also, in Asia could a tropi- 
cal habitat be found whence these animals could have floated? The 
great rivers of Siberia, the Lena, the Yenissei, and the Obi, sprung 
in a district where the winter climate is singularly severe; south of 
these head streams are the sand wastes of the Kirghiz Kazahs and of 
Mongolia, which were apparently a sea bottom in former times, and 
whose climate and other surroundings are even more adverse than 
those of Central Siberia. These physical difficulties point only to 
one conclusion. The same conclusion was arrived at by Brandt, 
from a consideration of the fact that the bodies and skeletons of 
Mammoths are sometimes found standing upright, as if they had 
sunk in that position into the soft ground. This was the case with 
the specimen found by Ssarytschef, near Alansk, already mentioned ; 
with a skeleton found about 1827 near Petersburgh, as reported to 
Brandt by Pander; a third which was found in the peninsula of the 
