H. H. Howorth — Cause of the Extinction of the Mammoth. 405 



petent observer, that the Tihinoceros of the Vilui came by its end 

 by being suffocated or drowned in mud, is a good introduction to the 

 chain of evidence pointing the same moral which I shall presently 

 cite. Brandt, in the paper just quoted, tells us that, in conjunction 

 wath Hedenstrom, he made a careful microscopic examination of the 

 earth which was attached to these Ehinoceros remains, and found 

 them to consist of two kinds, the most important being mould con- 

 taining vegetable fragments, and which he took for remains of 

 fresh- water plants, and the soil as a fresh- water deposit. The other 

 kind consisted of a blue-grey iron sand [id. 224). 



Brandt quotes this discovery of vegetable debris in the soil at- 

 tached to the head of the Ehinoceros in proof of his position, which 

 he argues for elsewhere, and which has been a favourite one with 

 some English geologists, that the Mammoths, etc., were suffocated 

 in the river mud which eventually covered them up entirely. To 

 this theory, however, there is more than one fatal objection. In the 

 first place, as we have seen, the large majority of the remains are 

 not found in the river-beds, but in the high hillocks of the tundra, 

 out of reach of the rivers. Again, Brandt's reasoning, that the bodies 

 were covered by successive deposits of the river mud, is inconsistent 

 with their perfect preservation, which necessitates their having been 

 engulphed at once and for ever. Lastly, and most important of 

 all, there is no mud brought down by the rivers in which they 

 could sink in this way. Schmidt, an excellent geologist, who 

 especially addressed himself to this point, says expressly : " Die 

 Nordischen Fliisse werfen keine grossen Mengen von Schlamm aus ; 

 die diinnen Schlammschichten, die nach dem Friihlingshochwasser 

 auf den Niederungen am Flussufer zuriickbleiben, konnen kein 

 Mammuth versinken lassen " (Bulletin St. Petersburg!! Academy', 

 13, 119). 



Since writing the former papers of this series, I have read L. von 

 Schrenck's most interesting memoir on the discovery of a cai'case 

 of the Bhinoceros Merckii (the Ehinoceros leptorhinus of western 

 authors) in Siberia. A few words about this discovery will not be 

 out of place here. This carcase was found in 1877, and was first 

 described in an article by M. Czersky, in the Memoirs of the East 

 Siberian branch of the Imperial Bureau of the Geographical Society, 

 who mentioned the arrival of the head at Irkutsk, and assigned it to 

 the ordinary Siberian Rhinoceros, the Bhinoceros tichorhinus. The 

 body was discovered on the river Balantai or Butantai, as Schrenck 

 would read the name, a feeder of the Yana, about 200 versts to the 

 north of Werkhoyansk. This district is perhaps the very coldest in 

 all Siberia. The head and one foot of the Rhinoceros were cut off 

 and sent to Irkutsk by a merchant named Gorokhof, while we are 

 told the body was washed away by the river and lost. The head 

 was eventually sent on to Moscow, and has been described in detail 

 by Schrenck in a paper read on the 17th of December, 1879, before 

 the Imperial Academy, and published in the 17th volume of its 

 Memoirs, with most interesting photographs of the head in question, 

 and of that from the river Vilui long ago described by Pallas. 



