186 



CLIMATE OF THE MAMMOTH 



[Or. X. 



speculations concerning the climate of the Arctic regions 

 both at the time when these animals existed, and throughout 

 the whole period which has since elapsed. There may have 

 been oscillations of temperature, accompanying changes in 

 the geography of the globe, or partly due to distinct phases 

 of the precession of the equinoxes, or to various states of the 

 ellipticity of the earth's orbit since the era in question, but 

 one thing is clear, that the ice or congealed mud in which 

 the bodies of such quadrupeds were enveloped has never once 

 been melted since the day when they perished, so as to allow 

 the free percolation of water through the matrix, for had this 

 been the case, the soft parts of the animals could not have 

 remained undecomposed. 



Rome is the most southern limit to which the fossil bones 

 of the mammoth have as yet been traced in Europe. Some 

 were detected in 1858 in Monte Sacro, one of the Seven 

 Hills of Rome, where thev were recognised bv M. Lartet 



among the 



om 



as 



mammalian remains obtained by Prof. Ponzi 



Icanic gravel of that locality. Other specimens, 



I learn from M. de Verneuil, have since been found in 



ient alluvium on the banks of the Tiber, at Ponte Molle, 



dth flint implements of contemporaneous date, 

 lot obliged, says Dr. Falconer, to suppose that 

 this ancient elephant, which in Europe extended its range 



W> 



from the Tiber to the 

 Eschscholtz Bay to the 

 every latitude with 



North 



Me 



a thick covering of fur. 

 i the domestic i?oat is a\ 



was enveloped in 



'The fine 



Dr. Elem 



plains of Tibet, where the winter, at a height of 16,000 feet 

 above the sea, is most severe, disappears entirely from the 

 same animal in the valley of Cashmere.' * 



, long before the discovery above alluded to 

 by Brandt, of fossil pine-leaves in the molar of a Siberian 

 rhinoceros, had hinted, that < th e kind of food which the 

 existing species of elephant prefers will not enable us to 

 determine, or even to offer a probable conjecture, concernin 

 that of the extinct species. No one,' he 





said, 'acquainted 



* Falconer, American Fossil Elephant, Nat. Hist. Rev., vol. iii. 1863. 



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