430 Sir R. I. Murchison on the 



shores and estuaries into which their bones had been washed, would 

 necessarily render the climate much more intensely cold.* 



But, even if it be admitted that the climate must have been more 

 mild when mammoths lived than at the present day, there still occur- 

 red the obvious difficulty, that without some entire change in the 

 nature of its vegetation, of which the surface of Siberia offers no indi- 

 cations, by no possibility could a great phyllophagous, or branch- 

 eating animal, like the true elephants (which require rich Asiatic 

 jungles for their sustenance), have lived in a region of fir-trees, birch, 

 willows, and moss. Comparative anatomy and physiology have here, 

 however, fortunately come to the assistance of the geologist ; and in 

 this, as in many other of his darkest paths, have been his surest 

 beacons. Examining and comparing the composite structure of the 

 very numerous teeth of the mammoth, Professor Owen has ascertain- 

 ed that they possess a peculiarity in the greater portion of the dense 

 enamel which essentially distinguishes them from the teeth of the 

 Asiatic or African elephant, and which specially provided the mam- 

 moth with the means of subsisting upon the coarser ligneous tissues 

 of trees and shrubs. In short, this great zoological authority, com- 

 bining the consideration of the peculiar structure of their teeth 

 with the nature of their epidermis and coverings, has come to the 

 conclusion that the mammoth was, by its very organization, a meet 

 companion for the reindeer and other inhabitants of the north. f 



Applying the views of Humboldt, we might well admit, that 

 the rise of the Ural and Altai mountains, and with them, of enormous 

 masses of the continent of Asia, must have so refrigerated Siberia, 

 that its forests, which, in the halcyon days of mammoths, may have 



* There is no portion of Mr. LyelPs speculations upon ancient physical 

 geography which has impressed us with greater respect for his talents, than 

 his view of the adaptation of the mammoths to a residence in the former 

 Siberia ; and we rejoice that the geological evidences we have brought to 

 bear upon the question essentially sustain his inference. See Lyell's Princi- 

 ples of Geology, 4to ed., vol. i., pp. 141, 150, et seq., where the whole question 

 is discussed with reference to Dr. Fleming, and other zoologists. 



f Sec Owen's History of British Fossil Mammalia and Birds, 1844, p. 261, 

 et. seq. 



