n. H. Hoivorth — Sudden Extinction of the Mammoth. 309 



In the absence of the specimen, it were perhaps wiser to rest in 

 the conviction that Archaopteryx is a Bird, less modified in structure 

 in the direction which existing avian osteology has taken, and 

 therefore more easily comparable with reptiles ; but not necessarily 

 more reptilian, or of inferior organic grade to the newer bird type. 

 Certainly the time has not come when we can assemble a jury of 

 its inferior kith and kindred, and accept such verdict as they may 

 suggest concerning its genesis. For the osteological structures 

 which are universal in living birds, and from which the Archceopteryx 

 departs, are independent of affinity, and among mammals would not 

 rank as of much importance. If the ArchcBopteryx do no more than 

 teach us to extend our conception of the limits within which a bird's 

 skeleton may range, it will have enriched science with morphological 

 knowledge, which is invaluable in its theoretical bearings. 



V. — The Sudden Extinction of the Mammoth. 

 By Henry H. Howorth, F.S.A. 



IN a previous paper ^ I urged that the conckisions there arrived 

 at necessitated certain corollaries which are not universally 

 accepted, and to which I hoped to call attention in the future. One of 

 these I now venture to shortly discuss. 



We have tried to focus the facts about the Mammoth which go to 

 show that its surroundings and mode of life were the same from 

 Central Europe to Behring's Straits ; that when we examine the 

 position candidly and completely, there is no room for hypotheses 

 requiring an annual migration of the Mammoth and his contempo- 

 raries from North to South and vice versa with the seasons as 

 some have urged; that the view almost universally held now by 

 Continental and especially Russian palseontologists, that the Mammoth 

 lived all the year round where its remains are still found, is amply 

 justified ; and lastly, that all the evidence goes to show that when the 

 Mammoth lived along the borders of the Arctic Sea in Siberia in 

 great numbers, the climate of that area was a comparatively tem- 

 perate one, and that its more equable character enabled animals and 

 plants, which are now the inhabitants of a more northern and a 

 more southern latitude respectively, to live together under more 

 neutral conditions. These conclusions being granted, it follows, as 

 at Inast an a. priori probability, that the causes of the extinction of the 

 Mammoth and his companions — a problem of the highest scientific 

 as well as of singularly romantic interest — were the same throughout. 



We cannot help saying in limine, that it is a pity that English 

 writers on Post-Glacial geology should so often have based very wide 

 and far-reaching inductions upon facts collected in such a narrow 

 area as that embraced within our four seas. Not only is the field 

 very narrow, but also very misleading. Great Britain is an area 

 where during the period of the Mammoth two contrasted zoological 

 and botanical provinces met and overlapped. The typical fauna and 

 flora characteristic of the vast Siberian plains where the Mammoth 

 chiefly flourished were here mixed with, and dovetailed into, another 

 1 Geol. Mag. 1881, p. 256. 



