LECTUEE IX. 245 



from the region tliey previously occupied. This plienomenon 

 is not peculiarly striking, as it is repeated within historical 

 times. The deer, the beaver, the ibex, formerly plentiful in 

 Switzerland, have now entirely disappeared. The wolf is ex- 

 terminated in England ; the bear is so in the greater part of 

 Grermany. On casting a glance at this departure of species, it 

 seems singular, that most of such as formerly inhabited central 

 Europe have retreated northward ; that consequently at the 

 diluvial period there existed in the heart of Europe a fauna, 

 the remains of which are at present only found in the north. 

 These northern, but formerly central-European animals, in- 

 clude the glutton, the icebear, hamster marmot, the lemming, 

 the reindeer, the elk, the aurochs, the musk ox, the walrus. 

 Some of these species are apparently becoming extinct, as the 

 bison [Bison Europceus) , of which there exists only a single herd 

 in a Polish forest. Others hover, as it were, on the boundary 

 of the German continent, as, for instance, the elk, which inha- 

 bits only a small portion of the coast of the Baltic, but is found 

 in Scandinavia, and Russia : others have retreated to the 

 Arctic circle, as the lemming, glutton, and reindeer ; others, 

 again, now inhabit the icy mountain regions, as the chamois, 

 marmots, and ibex. Whilst among the extinct species types 

 are found, which are at present confined to regions south of the 

 Mediterranean, as lions, hysenas, and riverhorses; we find among 

 the departed species scarcely a well-founded instance of a re- 

 treat to the south ; and as regards the extinct species, as the 

 elephant and the rhinoceros, we may conclude that they retired 

 to the north, step by step, until they found the limits of their 

 existence in Northern Siberia. This view is supported by the 

 fact that the "collared lemming" [Lemmiis torquatus), at pre- 

 sent existing in the highest north beyond the forest region, is 

 now only found in the ossiferous fissures of Northern Germany, 

 but never further south. 



Since, then, of the extinct species, the cognates of which at 

 present inhabit southern climates, some had by their woolly 

 skin been enabled to support the cold, it gives rise to the 

 presumption, that other species, with whose bones only we 

 are acquainted, but of whose integuments nothing is known, 

 may have been similarly protected from the cold. As it is 



