Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths. 429 



imagine a sudden fall of temperature, in order to account for the 

 peculiar conservation of these creatures, by which they were sup- 

 posed to have been at once frozen up in the mud into which they 

 had been washed, or the morasses into which they had sunk. 



The discovery, indeed, of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus by Pallas, with 

 its skin and flesh adherent, upon the banks of the Vilgni, a tributary 

 of the Lena (a portion of this rhinoceros, with the skin and hair 

 adherent to the sides of the head, are now to be seen in the Museum 

 of Natural History at St. Petersburg), and still more, the subsequent 

 acquisition of the entire carcase of a mammoth, on the banks of the 

 Lena, in lat. 70° N., by Mr. Adams, the details relating to which 

 have been so fully given by geologists of all countries, naturally, 

 indeed, led to such ideas. Convinced by their perfect preservation, 

 that these animals must have lived in or near the countries where 

 their bones are found, Cuvier declared it to be his opinion, that they 

 must have disappeared by a revolution, which at once destroyed all 

 the individuals, accompanied by a sudden change of climate. 



In England, this view was very ably sustained by Dr. Buckland, and 

 particularly in his memoir on the fossil remains which occur in Esch- 

 scholtz Bay, and other places on the east side of Behring's Straits,* 

 where vast quantities of mammoths' bones occur in mud cliffs, ap- 

 parently similar to those of the mouths of the Lena, and other great 

 rivers in Northern Siberia. So long as geologists were compelled to 

 argue upon the nature and habits of the mammoth, as if it were similar 

 to an Asiatic elephant, the opinions of such great masters were neces- 

 sarily dominant. Mr. Lyell had, however, the courage to lead the way 

 in taking a new and highly philosophic view of the subject, by sug- 

 gesting, that the peculiar covering of these great mammals rendered 

 them fit inhabitants of a northern climate, and that no greater catas- 

 trophes were required to account for their destruction, than the gra- 

 dual elevation of large masses of Siberia, which, laying dry the low 



* See Beechy's Voyage to the Pacific, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 593. Besides 

 the abundant remains of mammoths, Dr. Buckland describes those of Bos 

 Urus, deer and horse. They occur in cliffs of mud and sand, about 00 feet 

 high, which are usually much congealed and frozen. 



