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AND ITS ASSOCIATES. 



180 



obserT 



edg 



Tinders and bones of elephants, in strata of yellow 



and red loam, alternating with coarse sand and gravel, in 

 which was also much petrified wood of the willow and other 

 trees. Neither here nor in the neighbouring country were 

 there any marine shells, but merely layers of black coal * 

 But grinders of the mammoth were collected much farther 

 down the same river, near the sea, in lat. 70°, mixed with 

 marine petrifactions, f Many other places in Siberia are 

 cited by Pallas, where sea shells and fishes' teeth accom- 

 pany the bones of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and Siberian 

 buffalo, or bison {Bos prisons) . 



Carcasses of elephant and rhinoceros preserved in frozen 



mu d 9 But it is not on the Obi nor the Yenesei, but on the 



Lena farther to the east, where, in the same parallels of 

 latitude, the cold is far more intense, that fossil remains 

 were first found in the most wonderful state of preservation. 

 In 1772, Pallas obtained from Wiljuiskoi, in lat. 64°, from 

 the banks of the Wiljui, a tributary of the Lena, the carcass 

 of a rhinoceros (K. tichorhinns) , taken from the sand in 

 which it must have remained congealed for ages, the soil 

 of that region being always frozen to within a slight depth 

 of the surface. This carcass, which was compared to a 

 natural mummy, emitted an odour like putrid flesh, part 

 of the skin being still covered with short crisp wool and with 

 black and grey hairs. In allusion to the quantity of hair on 

 the foot and head conveyed to St. Petersburg, Pallas asked 

 whether this animal might not have inhabited a cold region 

 of Middle Asia, its clothing being so much warmer than that 



of the African rhinoceros. J 

 Professor Brandt, of St. Petersburg, in a letter to Baron 



Alex. Von Humboldt, dated 1846, adds the following parti- 

 culars respecting this wonderful fossil relic : — ' I have been 

 so fortunate as to extract from cavities in the molar teeth of 

 the Wiljui rhinoceros a small quantity of its half-chewed. 

 food, among which fragments of pine-leaves, one-half of the 

 seed of a polygonaceous plant, and very minute portions of 

 wood with porous cells (or small fragments of coniferous 



1 



Pallas, Reise im Russ. Reiche, pp. t Nov. Com. Petrop., vol. xvii. p. 584. 



409 > 4 10. 1 Ibid. p. 591. 



\ Ibid. p. 591. 



