330 THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



of southeast Eussia and southwest Siberia, regions which, like the 

 tundras, are much exposed to wind action. The general character and 

 distribution of the loss prove its reolian origin, and its organic contents 

 are quite in keeping. We may be sure, then, that dry steppe conditions 

 formerly prevailed throughout central Europe, and that in those regions 

 dust storms and snowstorms must have been of common occurrence. 

 We have seen how, in existing tundras and steppes, the semidomesticated 

 and wild animals of those regions are now and again overwhelmed in 

 storms and smothered in snow. Now, similar catastrophes must have 

 happened again and again in the tundras and steppes of prehistoric 

 times. And we are not left in this matter to mere conjecture, for the 

 carcasses of some of the more notable animals of those days, now ex- 

 tinct, have been preserved to the present in the frozen snows — the 

 famous ice formations of northern Siberia. So perfectly preserved, 

 indeed, was the mammoth discovered by Mr. Adams that its flesh was 

 devoured by wolves and bears, and from the appearances presented 

 by it and others we can not doubt that the animals had perished in 

 snowdrifts. Brandt records, for example, that the congested veins and 

 capillary vessels in the head of a rhinoceros examined by him were 

 charged with coagulated blood, as if the animal had died of suffocation; 

 and Schrenck says of another described by him, that the distended 

 nostrils and gaping mouth were highly suggestive of a similar death. 

 It is probable that these animals were summer visitors to the tundras, 

 overtaken by autumnal snowstorms. If perfectly preserved carcasses 

 are rare, such is not the case with skeletal remains. In many places 

 throughout Siberia the bones of various mammals occur in enormous 

 quantities, huddled together, as it were, in very limited spots. It 

 seems impossible to account for such hecatombs on any other supposi- 

 tion than that they are the silent records of great blizzards and snow- 

 torms. Even in our own time herds of wild reindeer, with their 

 young, are overcome by snowstorms in the tundras, while in North 

 America great flocks of sheep and cattle frequently perish in the same 

 way. Professor Garman, who draws attention to the disastrous results 

 of blizzards in the great prairie lands of that region, is of opinion that 

 the extraordinary heaps of skulls and other remains of the bison that 

 are met with here and there in northern Colorado and Wyoming, are 

 the remains of herds which have been suffocated in snowdrifts. 



It is not necessary to suppose that all the relics and remains of the 

 mammoth and its congeners in Siberia are evidence of the destructive 

 effect of blizzards. The animals doubtless met their death under many 

 different circumstances. Sometimes they would appear to have been 

 bogged in swampy holes and morasses. I have referred to the peculiar 

 ice formations of the arctic coast lands. These are sheets of ice of 

 unknown thickness, preserved under more or less thick accumulations 

 of earthy and loamy materials. The ice is believed to represent the 

 blown or drifted snows of prehistoric times, which here and there have 



