424 



Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths. By Sir R. I. 

 Murchison, F.R.S., &c. 



Habitation of Mammoths and their Destruction — Similar Mammoth Bu- 

 rial in Western Europe — Siberian Entombment of Mammoths — British 

 Anologies — Conditions of Mammoth Burial explained — Views of Lyell, 

 Humboldt, and Owen — Ancient Geography of Siberia — Remote Age of 

 the N. Courses of the Great Siberian Streams — Elevation of Siberia, and 

 End of Mammoth Period — Fossil Quadrupeds of European Russia — 

 Mammoth Clay Drift at Taganrog — Whether Extinct Bos Urus and 

 Living Aurochs are the same ? — If so, its Preservation explained — Sub- 

 ject of Great Fossil Mammalia concluded. 



Though mammoths occur in certain quantities on the flanks of the 

 Ural, thus leading us to believe, that when alive they inhabited the 

 tract where their skeletons are entombed, it must be recollected, that 

 as, by other proofs, we have already endeavoured to shew the com- 

 paratively recent elevation of the Ural crest, this region cannot be 

 looked upon as having been rendered highly mountainous, until the 

 very period when great numbers of these animals were destroyed, — a 

 destruction which we believe to have been mainly accomplished when 

 the present watersheds between Europe and Asia were determined. 

 Let us suppose, then, that the mammoths and their associates ranged 

 over these hills when they formed the elevated edge of an eastern 

 continent. Further, let it be assumed (and this, indeed, is quite in 

 accordance with the physical features of this region), that the greater 

 number of the broad depressions which are now filled with auriferous 

 and mammoth detritus, were then occupied by lakes, in the grounds 

 around which these extinct quadrupeds had long lived, and into 

 whose shores or bottoms their bones had been washed for ages, and 

 we shall then have before us the conditions which will best explain 

 the Uralian phenomenon. No one can observe what the Russian 

 miner has accomplished, by damming up the existing rivers, and 

 thus forming artificial lakes in every sinuous tract in which ores 

 are worked, without being naturally led to the idea which we sug- 

 gest, that larger and deeper lakes were formerly in existence, — lakes, 

 in fact, which in still more primeval times fed the great rivers that 

 washed the Permian detritus to the sea then existing upon the west. 



