Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths. 431 



extended in certain promontories to near the Icy Sea, had neces- 

 sarily shrunk back to their present limits, and left these coasts 

 entirely to the reindeer and its mosses. But to require our belief 

 that the mammoth ever lived in the northernmost tracts of Siberia 

 is uncalled for, since geologists well know that the wide and low 

 tracts of northern Siberia, in which its remains are most abundant, 

 were then evidently beneath the sea ; and the bones must have been 

 drifted thither, and possibly for some distance.* Yet if we suppose 

 that these animals lived on certain lands, as in Ural and the north 

 trending chains, up to 60° and 65° N. lat. (which facts and physical 

 conditions warrant), we are still indebted to Professor Owen for 

 having removed the greatest of all the difficulties which previously 

 environed the problem ; since there is no longer any objection to the 

 mammoth being an inhabitant even of the Arctic circle, provided 

 (and there are still such examples in Europe), fir-trees and shrub-like 

 vegetables could exist in such latitudes. 



From the physical structure of the region, we are, indeed, entitled 

 to suppose, that not only the Ural and Altai mountains, but also 

 their advanced northern ridges and plateaux (a half or two-thirds 

 of Siberia), formerly constituted a region covered with forests, like 

 those of the Ural, in some parts, and with brushwood steppes in 

 others, from which whole herds of mammoths, as suggested by Mr. 

 Lyell, would naturally migrate in the summers (even now intensely 

 hot) to the embouchures of the great streams and edges of the then 

 Arctic sea. Such might have been, we may add, the position and 

 condition of some of these creatures at the periods when, as we have 

 imagined, the highest ridges of the Ural were thrown up, followed 

 by the rupture of many lakes, and the consequent inundation of large 

 tracts of the flat country, previously frequented by these great herbi- 

 vorous animals. During their long occupancy of these lands, my- 

 riads of their carcases must, doubtless, have been washed down by 

 the rivers, and buried in local mud and alluvium — in such positions, 

 in fact, as they are found along the banks of the Sosva add the tri- 

 butaries of the Obe, before alluded to. Others, reaching the mouths 



* Marine remains were found by Pallas, associated with mammoths' bones, 

 in numerous places, and about 70° N. lat. 



3 K 



