190 Recent Geological Discoveries. 



by hair and woo], in like manner, the musk-ox, or more properly 

 musk buffalo, is allied in its structure to the buffaloes of the 

 warmer latitudes ; and if nothing but its bones had been known, 

 might have been supposed to indicate a sub-tropical climate. 

 Then again, our knoAvledge that this creature actually lives in the 

 extreme North, confirms our belief that the creatures once its 

 contemporaries, notwithstanding their relation to tropical animals 

 of our day, were suited to a cold climate. 



Why fs the musk-ox now confined to Artie America, and why 

 have its gigantic associates disappeared ? No satisfactory expla- 

 nation can be given. We only vaguely know that these changes 

 have been connected witli ditlerences of climate, apparently de- 

 pending on a difterent distribution of sea and land from that 

 v.'hich prevails at present. 



These conditions alone do not, however, present a sufl3cient ex- 

 planation. The climate of the temperate regions of the Northern 

 hemisphere was then colder than now. But there had been a 

 milder climate previously, in theearlierpart of the Pliocene period. 

 Tlius the time of the Siberian Mammoth and European Musk-ox 

 stands between two milder climates, differing from each other en- 

 tirely in their terrestrial fauna, but still presenting many features 

 in common in that of the sea. When, in the present Avorld, we 

 pass from the Eastern continent to corresponding climates in the 

 Western, v,'e find difterent assemblages of land animals, but many 

 identical species of sea shell-fish. It is the same when, in gelogi- 

 cal time, we pass downward beyond the cold period of the later 

 Pliocene, to formations deposited under a climate more like the 

 -present. Such facts illustrate the comparatively limited range in 

 time and space of most of the higher inhabitants of the laud, and 

 the almost prodigality of the creative power in the introduction 

 of new forms of animals ; but they also show that there are in 

 the adaptation of species to climate and other conditions of exist- 

 ence correlations and adjustments tpo nice for our imperfect means 

 of investigation. 



It is strange also that the Musk-buffalo, clumsy and short- 

 legged, should have survived so many nobler creatures, and con- 

 tinued to exhibit his ungainly form, ferocious temper, and unpa- 

 ^ latable flesh, an unattractive remnant of that Pre-adamite fauna 

 that was swept away from the old world to make room for man. 

 Perhaps he owes his exemption from their fate to the hardy con- 

 stitution and warm covering that enable him in liis present north- ■ 



