a. H. Howorth — Cause of the Extinction of the Mammoth. 409 



been thrown with great violence from the south on a b ank, and 

 there heaped up. Now a smooth sea covering the tops of these 

 hills on the islands, would, even with the present form of the 

 interjacent ground, extend to Yakutsk, which is but 270 feet above 

 the sea. But before the latest deposits of mud and sand had settled 

 down, and had raised the ground more than 100 feet, the surface of 

 such a sea as we have supposed would have reached much further 

 up, even to the cliffs in the valley of the Lena. So it is clear that 

 at the time when the elephants and trunks of trees were heaped up 

 together, one flood extended from the centre of the continent to the 

 furthest barrier existing in the sea as it noio is. That flood may have 

 poured down from the high mountains through the rocky valleys. 

 The animals and trees which it carried off from above could sink but 

 slowly in the muddy and rapid waves, but must have been thrown 

 upon the older parts of Kotelnoi and New Siberia in the greatest 

 number and with the greatest force, because these islands opposed 

 the last bar to the diffusion of the waters" (op. cit. ii, pp. 379-380). 

 Let us now turn to Murchison and his companions, who wrote the 

 famous work on the Geology of the Urals. 



In explaining the mode of occurrence of the Mammoth remains in 

 the Urals, after postulating the former existence of lakes where the 

 auriferous and Mammoth detritus now is, they say, " Granting these 

 premises, all the relations of the Uralian Mammoth alluvia may, it 

 appears to us, be rationally explained ; for in some of the most violent 

 movements of elevation, tohich gave rise to the present central loater- 

 shed, loe may readily conceive how, their harrier being broTcen down, 

 these lacustrine waters were poured off, and hoio their shingly bottoms 

 and shores, already containing hones of Mammoths, iv ere desiccated and 

 raised up into the irregular mounds lohich now constitute the auriferous 



alluvia In some cases, however, the denuding and abrading 



power of waters, produced both by the bursting of lakes, and the 

 change in the direction of the currents, must have been considerable, 

 for such alone would account for several of the appearances we have 

 spoken of, and the transport of large blocks and enormous pepites 

 of gold into broad lateral depressions " (op. cit. pp. 492-3). 



Again, a former terrestrial surface, on which the great quadrupeds 

 lived for ages, and the rupture and desiccation of adjacent lakes, 

 coincident with some of the last elevations of the chain, will, we are 

 convinced, best explain the condition in which the remains of the 

 Mammoths are left buried on the edges of the uplifted ridges of the 

 Ural, as well as in the low lands and great estuaries furthest 

 removed from them. In the depressions at the very foot of tlie 

 chain, the Mammoth skeletons are broken up, and their bones, 

 together with those of Rhinoceros tichorhinus and Bos urus, are 

 rudely commingled in the coarse shingle derived from the mountains, 

 or in the clay above it. In proportion, however, as we advance 

 into the plains of Siberia, or descend into the valley of the Tobol 

 and the Obi or their affluents, these bones increase in quantity, and 

 are at the same time in much better conservation " (id. 494). 



" The single fact of the very wide difl'usion of Mammoth bones over 



