436 



Sir R. I. Murchison on the 



ter of the mammoth alluvia of European Russia, we cannot, perhaps, 

 do better than cite the example of Taganrog, because, exceedingly 

 remote from the regions we have been considering, and indeed, from 

 any mountains, it there forms the summit of abrupt cliffs on the Sea 

 of Azof, its relations to the underlying strata being well exposed. 

 This mammoth drift is just as completely separated from any deposit 

 resulting from existing agency, as the auriferous detritus and coarse 

 clay on the sides of the Ural hills, or as the high mud-banks forming 

 the cliffs of the great Siberian rivers and estuaries, for it covers the 

 whole of the coast plateaux, the present adjacent river Krinka, and the 

 Sea of Azof, being 100 feet beneath it. In truth, like similar drift 

 over wide spaces of Central and Southern Russia, it is distributed at 

 various levels, and most clearly indicates considerable submergence at 

 the period when these animals were destroyed. Such facts as to the 

 nature and distribution of the entombing materials which occupy 

 cliffs high above the low valleys, compel us to believe, that the greater 

 part of this low continent, unlike the Ural and the higher portions of 

 Siberia, was not dry land during the existence of the mammoths, or 

 in the period immediately antecedent to our own ; but was then ra- 

 ther in the same subaqueous condition as the low lands of northern 

 Siberia, when the mammoths' bones were there transported into 

 estuaries. Hence, we think, that many of the mammalian remains 

 to which we now allude, may have been transported into adjacent 

 lakes and estuaries by rivers ; and, in some instances, carried out 

 great distances to sea from the surrounding lands ; the Ural (includ- 

 ing a large tract of Permia) and Siberia on the east, the Crimsea* 

 and Caucasus on the south, or the Carpathian mountains on the 

 west. 



* See Demidoff, Voyage dans la Bussie Meridionale, vol. ii. The reader 

 will there find an account of the remains of bones of mammoth, bos, Ursus 

 spelams, horse, &c, as interred in a reddish coloured argillaceous drift near 

 Odessa ( Terrain Clysmien), which covers the surface, and enters into the 

 clefts of the subjacent tertiary or steppe limestone. M. Huot, the author of 

 that description, refers this deposit to lacustrine waters. He also found the 

 Mastodon angustidens associated with the mammoth at Kamisch Burun, 

 near Kertch. These animals lived, of course, in the adjacent high grounds of 

 the Caucasus and Crimsea (see our remarks thereon, p. 304). 



