H. H. Howorth— Circumpolar Lands. 307 
they never reached that continent, it is prima facie almost certain 
that the connection required must be found further north than these 
latitudes ; and this is confirmed when we compare the living mam- 
mals and birds of Japan with those of America. 
This makes it probable that the required bridge was in fact 
situated at a high latitude, where we must suppose that the con- 
ditions, although compatible with forest growth and consistent 
with the Mammoth, the Hlk, the Red Deer, and other forest- 
frequenting animals finding food, etc., were too severe for the 
Rhinoceros, the Hyzena, and the Great Ox to find congenial quarters. 
That it was situated here is further proved by the very close re- 
semblance, if not identity, of the living Rocky Mountain Sheep with 
that of Kamschatka. 
Turning to another class of evidence. I have elsewhere adduced 
arguments to show that the mammal remains found in the New 
Siberian Islands and in the Bear Islands (the former 250 miles away 
from the Siberian mainland) are the remains of animals which 
actually lived where these remains occur. These islands and the 
opposite coast are at this moment rising from the sea, and laying 
bare new sand banks containing heaps of Mammoth and other bones, 
which are so fresh and sharp and unweathered, that it is clear they 
have been lying where the animals died. All this makes it exceed- 
ingly probable, if not certain, that when the Mammoth lived the 
Siberian Islands, the Bear Islands, and probably also the small 
islands discovered in the Jeannette Expedition, on which semi-fossil 
bones were found, formed part of the mainland, and that the more 
or less temperate conditions which I have postulated of Northern 
Siberia then extended at least as far as these islands. 
This is very interesting, because, if we postulate so much, we 
have no difficulty in going further. The deepest soundings found 
by Nordenskiéld and other explorers between the Siberian Islands 
and the mainland are about 22 or 25 fathoms. This, again, is the 
greatest depth which has been sounded in the northern part of 
Bering’s Straits between America and Asia; so that, if the movement 
of elevation which united the New Siberian Islands to the mainland 
was as general and widespread as the present elevatory movement 
in the Arctic regions is, then it follows that the uniting of the 
Siberian Islands with the mainland was accompanied by the 
bridging over of the space between North-Eastern Asia and Northern 
Alaska; thus forming an isthmus between the two continents. We 
may perhaps go even further, and say that, inasmuch as the present 
elevatory movement over the whole Arctic basin is general and wide- 
spread (as I ventured to show many years ago in a paper read before 
the Geographical Society, which was reprinted in the Arctic Manual), 
and inasmuch also as the general evidence goes to show that the 
portion of the Arctic basin east of Nova Zembla is shallow, it follows 
as very probable that a large portion of what is now occupied by 
that sea was in the Mammoth age dry land, and not only dry land, 
but land upon which trees would grow, and therefore within the 
climatic zone marked by forests. 
