H. H. Hoivorth — Cause of the Extinction of the Mammoth. 407 



which I described in a previous paper, where the skeleton was 

 found among a number of trunks of birch trees, '•' Sceleton in sylva 

 prostrata inventum esse, et quidem inter arbores," as Brandt describes 

 it, and accounts also for the peculiar contorted attitude of one of 

 the two skeletons discovered at Torma, and described by Cuvier as 

 being in a cramped and curved position, occupying a space twenty 

 feet in length, with its hind feet near its tusks (Oss. Foss. vol. ii. 



We take it further that, if we are to interpret the past rigidly by 

 the present, and invoke only such causes as operate now, it will 

 be difficult to account for the immense deposits of bones which occur 

 together. Travellers who have visited the ordinary haunts of the 

 Elephant and Rhinoceros have frequently remarked on the extra- 

 ordinary scarcity of their bones and other remains. When old and 

 worn out, they apparently seek out the recesses of the forest and 

 retire there to die. Here, on the contrarj-, we have remains of whole 

 herds together ; the bones equally preserved, the ivory equallj'' fresh, 

 and pointing to but one conclusion, that they perished in herds where 

 they are found, and perished by some overwhelming cataclysm. The 

 fact of so many of the remains being found in high ground seems to 

 show that this high ground was a place of refuge where the beasts 

 congregated in the presence of some common danger, such as a 

 general inundation which threatened to annihilate them. In this 

 way also we can best account for the heterogeneous character of the 

 collections of bones. Mammoth and Khinoceros, Bison and Bos 

 Primigenius, Musk Sheep and Stag, etc., animals that do not 

 naturally herd together, which cannot be supposed to have visited 

 one particular bog at one time in their usual course of life to be 

 engulphed, and would not perish from such a cause in vast herds of 

 many hundreds together, as they must have done in New Siberia, on 

 the Obi, at Canstadt, etc. It has been suggested that this mixture 

 of species is to be explained on the theory that where it occurs there 

 was once a crossing place or ford across a river, where it is natural 

 that accidents on a large scale should happen, but this will not 

 apply at all to Siberia, where so many of the deposits are not found, 

 near rivers, and where the main deposits, such as those of New 

 Siberia and the adjacent islands, are not only 150 miles distant from 

 the mainland, but out of the w-ay of any river current. It seems 

 clear to me that this gathering together of the varied fauna of the 

 district is paralleled by the great floods which occur occasionally in 

 the tropics, where we find the tiger and his victims, all collected 

 together on some dry place reduced to a common condition of timidity 

 and helplessness by some flood which has overwhelmed the flat 

 country. 



Whichever way, in fact, we view the problem as a zoological one, 

 we are forced to the same conclusion, namely, that the Mammoth 

 perished by a sudden cataclysm, in which he was overwhelmed by 

 a wide-spread inundation. Let us now turn to the geological 

 evidence proper. Limiting ourselves at present to Siberia, where, 

 as we have seen, the problem may be studied with fewer sophisti- 



