H. S. Howorth — Came of the Extinction of the Mammoth. 403 



the foreign deposits, and the vague speculation as to the horizon of 

 the Muschelkalk, it would seem advisable to distinguish the Water- 

 stones for the future, reserving the term Lower Keuper Sandstone 

 for the sandstones and conglomerates, as typically developed in 

 Cheshire. 



III. — The Cause of the Mammoth's Extinction. 

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



IN a previous paper we showed that the extinction of the Mammoth 

 was sudden, and was accompanied by a sudden change of climate 

 throughout Northern Siberia, which enabled its soft parts to be pre- 

 served intact. We did not mean that the change of climate was the 

 cause of the Mammoth's extinction. This it clearly was not, for 

 this change on a large and marked scale was apparently confined to 

 Siberia, while the Mammoth disappeared from a much wider area, 

 where this climatic revolution could not have been so fatal. A 

 sudden change of climate could not account for a catena of Mam- 

 moth carcases found hurled several feet underground from the Obi to 

 Behrings Straits. If they had been killed by the cold merely, their 

 bodies would have lain on the surface where they fell and become 

 long ago the prey of the predator}'- animals. Nor again can we, with 

 such a postulate merely, account for the remains occurring in many 

 cases in hecatombs, and in many cases also with a mixture of various 

 species of animals. The cold would hardly have destroyed the bears 

 and hyasnas which are found linked in a common fate with the 

 Mammoths and Khinoceroses. Nor, as we shall see, would a mere 

 change of climate, however severe, account for other factors in the 

 problem. The change of climate accounts perfectly for the preserva- 

 tion of the carcases, which preservation again necessitates the con- 

 clusion that that change was a sudden or very rapid one ; but we 

 have clearly still to seek the real cause of the disappearance of the 

 animals of which the change of climate was a concurrent effect. 



In addressing ourselves to this problem, we would again begin by 

 insisting upon the necessity for putting aside a priori prejudice, 

 founded upon current geological theories. W^e had occasion to 

 argue in a previous paper that the doctrine of Uniformity, which has 

 done more than yeoman's service in clearing geological reasoning 

 from a great many immature and a priori hypotheses, has been 

 pressed in England to a degree far beyond what students in America 

 or the Continent deem justified by the facts. In former days, when 

 a deus ex macMna was summoned to explain every slight difficulty, 

 and a cataclysm suggested as the ready cause of every change in 

 the Earth's crust, it was necessary that some one with vigour and 

 energy should point out that the best and most fruitful way to study 

 the past history of the globe was not to have recourse to cataclysm, 

 at every turn, but to learn how changes were being effected now, 

 and to base our induction upon such a study. This was most neces- 

 sary ; but it was inevitable that this course of reasoning should in 

 turn become exaggerated, until we find it gravely asserted that the 

 pinnacled mountains of the Sierra Nevada in Spain, the Canons of 



