THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 331 



been protected from complete dissolution by soil and subsoil flowing 

 over and accumulating upon them, under the influence of thaw, in 

 spring and summer. Such movements of superficial materials are in- 

 deed of common occurrence in high latitudes at the present day. The 

 surface of the buried ice strata is very uneven, being furrowed and 

 trenched by deep ruts and hollows. These depressions are filled up 

 with frozen mud, etc., containing vegetable debris and abundant mam- 

 malian remains, including those of mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. 

 Probably a large number of the bones may simply have been introduced 

 into the hollows by the flowing soil in spring — they may have been 

 lying originally scattered over the surface. In other cases, however, 

 the animals themselves seem to have fallen or sunk into the depres- 

 sions. All the evidence leads to the inference that in the warm season 

 these high northern regions were visited abundantly by mammoths, 

 rhinoceroses, horses, bisons, wapiti, and others. Such being the case, 

 it is not hard to understand how the bulkier animals might now and 

 again become trapped in the treacherous bogs and subjacent muds that 

 covered and concealed the ice formations and their deep clefts and 

 depressions. 



When we turn to the loss of Europe, we meet with copious evidence 

 to show that the wild animals of our prehistoric steppes and tundras 

 were often done to death in their hundreds and thousands. Again and 

 again great heaps and accumulations of their skulls and skeletal 

 remains have been encountered in our lossic accumulations — appear- 

 ances exactly recalling the similar bone finds of Siberia and North 

 America. The deposits in which the European bone finds occur are of 

 wind-blown origin, and we seem justified, therefore, in concluding that 

 the animals perished in snowstorms. In these low latitudes, however, 

 we could not expect to meet with ice formations like those of the 

 tundras. But that drifted snows did formerly accumulate in middle 

 Europe, and were preserved for long x>eriods under coverings of sand 

 and other materials, we have good reasons for believing. Indeed, even 

 at the present day the drifted snows in southeast Russia are occasionally 

 buried under sand and so persist for years. In one ease recorded by 

 Borszcow, what appeared to be an ordinary sandhill proved to be a 

 mass of congealed snow cloaked in sand about a foot in thickness. 

 Immediately under the surface the snow was granular and neve-like, 

 but a little deeper it was firm and solid like ice. This was in one of the 

 tributary valleys of the Ilek, in the steppes south of Orenburg, about 

 the fiftieth parallel — a relatively dry region. If in a low-lying region 

 so far south snow can be preserved in this way, we may readily believe 

 that in the steppe epoch of middle Europe snowdrifts similarly protected 

 might now and again have persisted for years. But it was during the 

 preceding tundra epoch that this would be most commonly the case. 

 And much interesting evidence is forthcoming to show that in many 

 places thick sheets of congealed snow did accumulate and become buried 



