Facts from the Arcana of Nature. 103 



before the advent of the glacial period." The discovery, how- 

 ever, of elephant and mammoth remains, in a comparatively 

 perfect state, on the shores of the Icy Sea, demonstrates that 

 the change of climate occurring at their deposit must have 

 been instantaneous, otherwise and unless the carcases were 

 frozen at moment of deposit, decomposition must have taken 

 place. "The tusks of at least 1 00 mammoths, or about 40,000 

 pounds of ivory, are bartered for -every year in New Siberia. 

 Notwithstanding the large amount carried away, the supply 

 does not seem to diminish. The remains are scattered along 

 the valleys and near the mouths of great rivers ; and, in a 

 number of instances, the mammoth entire has been dis- 

 covered, with its skin protected by a double covering of 

 hair and wool, and its flesh in such preservation as to afford 

 food for dogs and wild beasts. Whatever the cause of the 

 Siberian mammoth's death, it is certain they were suddenly 

 enveloped in ice, which has not been previously disturbed 

 since they were first entombed." " There is not," says Pallas, 

 " in all Asiatic Russia, a stream or river, in the banks of 

 which are not to be found the remains of elephants and 

 other animals now strangers to that climate." 



Hypotheses have been submitted accounting for the above 

 phenomena, by the effect of sudden upheaval, by igneous 

 agencies of the Himalayan range, causing devastating 

 destruction, by force of torrents, resulting from the vast 

 precipitation consequent upon elevation of the summits, far 

 within the limits of perpetual snow. Such hypotheses are, 

 however, quite inadequate to account for the cataclysmal 

 convulsions revealed by geology ; which, with due regard 

 to all the phenomena presented, admit of but one mode 

 of explanation, namely, that they have resulted from a 

 sudden change in the axis of rotation of the Earth caused 

 by change of her centre of gravity, and necessary oscillation 

 — involving oceanic disruption — until brought to quies- 

 cence by gravitation of all movable matter on the sur- 

 face to a position vertical to the new centre of gravity. 

 The astronomical position of the Earth, " tilted," as Sir J. 

 Herschel terms it, upon the plane of her orbit, is the evi- 

 dent result, as observations in Nature demonstrate, of the 

 accumulation of the bulk of the waters of the globe in the 

 Southern Hemisphere. What do presently progressing changes 

 prognosticate as to the temporal destiny of a large section 

 of the human race, if, by earthquake disruption, an entrance 

 of the ocean should take place into the vast central cavity 



