440 Habitation and Destruction of the Mammoths. 



stock of such animals ; and just as we might expect, the remains of 

 British mammoths occur in very small numbers indeed, when com- 

 pared with those of the great charnel-houses in Siberia, into which 

 their bones had been carried down during countless ages, from the 

 largest mass of surface which geological inquiries have yet shewn to 

 have been dry land during that epoch. 



In treating this subject, we have been gradually led on to specu- 

 late on features which connect the former with the present surface of 

 a large portion of the earth, and have little other reference to sub- 

 marine conditions, than the elevation into land of the bottoms of 

 estuaries and sea-shores on the edge of that continent. In the next 

 chapter, however, we must entirely change the scene, by returning to 

 the consideration of Russia in Europe, nearly the whole of whose 

 superficies presents phenomena of a very different class, which, we 

 shall endeavour to shew, can alone have been produced by very 

 powerful currents and long-continued submersion under the waters of 

 of the sea, — phenomena which we think, prevailed during the period 

 when the great mammalia were the inhabitants of Siberia and certain 

 southern tracts to which we have alluded. 



P. S. — It may seem remarkable, that in a region like Russia, so 

 extensively tenanted by bears, when first reclaimed by man, we 

 should scarcely have alluded to their occurrence during a former con- 

 dition of the surface. Their bones, however, have been found, as 

 well as those of horses, elks, and many other animals, on whose re- 

 mains we have not thought it necessary to expatiate, as they are 

 mere repetitions of a phenomenon common to other parts of Eu- 

 rope. Judging from the anology of other countries, where the bones 

 of the Ursus spelseus have usually been found in rocky caverns, it is 

 evident, that, from the nature of her surface, Russia in Europe offers 

 very few spots where the geologist might hope to find them. We 

 have, however, alluded to caverns in the Ural Mountains and Siberia 

 (the caves of Yermac on the Tchussovaya, and others on the Issetz, 

 pp. 365 and 368), which being in positions far above the highest 

 floods, and on precipitous faces of palaeozoic limestone, would, if ex- 

 plored by some Russian Buckland, afford, we have little doubt, the 

 remains of extinct animals. — From Edinb. New Phil. Journal. 



