ON THE MAMMOTH AND RHINOCEROS FOUND IN SIBERIA. IlI1 
burns with a bright flame, emitting a fatty odour. In the micro- 
scopic investigation of the earth, detached vegetable fragments with 
yellowish dotted cells, similar to those of coniferze, were found. 
Occasionally I succeeded in discovering greenish fragments of plants, 
which I considered as indications of freshwater alge. I have not as 
yet observed any remains of infusoria. The other kind of earth, of 
a bluish grey colour and very friable, occurs in spots on particular 
arts of the head, and from Helmersen’s observations is blue iron- 
earth (phosphate of iron or vivianite). The earth attached to the 
remains of the rhinoceros may therefore be considered as a deposit 
from fresh water which has enveloped the body of the animal sunk 
in the mud. This is more probable, from the fact that the Siberian 
rivers are well-known to carry down large quantities of mud. 
The earth adhering to the soft parts of the mammoth is in every 
respect similar, except that I have found no blue iron-earth. Adams’s 
mammoth, therefore, was assuredly buried im the frozen earth, and 
not merely enclosed in a block of ice. The belief so prevalent among 
various nations in Northern Siberia, that the mammoth lives under 
the earth, also confirms this view of the occurrence of its remains in 
the frozen soil. 
This opinion, that the bodies of these Siberian pachyderms were 
covered with mud by streams of fresh water, seems, at first sight, 
to be contradicted by the fact, that M. von Middendorf found in 
Siberia, 300 versts from the Polar Sea, along with the fragments of a 
mammoth skeleton, remains of sea-shells of species still living in the 
Arctic ocean. But this mammoth skeleton might have been washed 
out of its original place by the sea, and again imbedded along with 
the remains of these mollusca. 
The circumstance that we know of three distinct mammoth car- 
cases or skeletons, found at different times and in different places in 
an upright position, may well induce us to believe that these great 
pachyderms had first sunk in the mud and were afterwards gradually 
more and more covered up by subsequent deposits. If this is a true 
view of the case, it follows that they were destroyed, not by a flood 
from the south, but rather by one from the north ; if indeed, which 
perhaps is not fully proved, an inundation of the ocean is at all 
necessary. | 
I am acquainted with the following notices, mostly unpublished, 
of mammoths found in an upright position, which I now mention, as 
the mode of their occurrence may appear of interest to you. 
Saritschew * relates that the carcase of the mammoth, at least par- 
tially covered with skin and hair, which was discovered by him 
washed out of the sandy bank of the river Alasseja, was originally 
in an upright position. According to a verbal communication of 
M. von Pander, the fragments of the mammoth skeleton found some 
twenty years ago on the bank of a river near St. Petersburg had 
also an upright position. The worthy Conservator of the Herbarium 
of the Academy, Dr. Ruprecht, heard, during his journey to the 
* Reise, Bd. i. s. 106. 
