318 ON. THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



change of climate, which prevented them from propagating. But 

 whatever that cause may have been, it must have been sudden. 



The perfect preservation of the bones and ivory found on the plains 

 of Siberia, is entirely attributable to the circumstance of their being 

 congealed by the frost, which in general arrests the action of the 

 elements upon them. If this frost had only overtaken them by 

 degrees, these bones, and more particularly the soft parts with which 

 they are sometimes enveloped, would have had time to become as 

 much decomposed as those which are found in tlie warm and temperate 

 countries. 



Above all, it would have been impossible that the flesh and skin of 

 an entire body, such as that discovered by Mr. Adams, could have 

 been preserved so incorruptibly, if it had not been instantaneously sur- 

 rounded by the ice, which has served to preserve it down to our time. 

 Thus, all the hypotheses of a gradual change in the temperature of the 

 earth, or of a slow variation, either in the inclination or position of 

 the earth's axis, falls to the ground. 



If the present elephants of India were the descendants of those 

 elephants of old, and had escaped into the countries inhabited by them 

 at present, at the period of the catastrophe which destroyed them 

 elsewhere, it would be impossible to explain why their species has been 

 destroyed in America, where remains in proof of their existence are 

 still found. The vast empire of Mexico presented them with heights 

 in abundance to escape from an inundation so inconsiderable as that 

 which we are led to suppose : and the climate is there warmer than is 

 sufficient for their temperament. The divers races of the fossil 

 mastodon, of the hippopotamus, and rhinoceros, lived in the same 

 countries and in the same provinces inhabited by the fossil elephant, 

 as their bones are found in the same layers of earth and in the same 

 state. We cannot possibly conceive a cause which would have de- 

 stroyed the one while it spared the other. Certain it is, however,^ 

 that the former animals are no longer in existence ; and with regard to 

 them there cannot be the slightest room for dispute, as we shall show 

 in the chapter appropriated to the subject. 



Hence, every circumstance concurs in leading us to think that the 

 fossil elephant is, like them, an extinct species, although it bears a 

 stronger resemblance to one of those existing at the present day, and 

 though its extinction has been produced by a sudden cause, by the 

 same great catastrophe v/hich has destroyed the species of the same 

 epoch, the proofs of whose existence we shall find in the succeeding 

 chapters. 



Addition. 



Upon the causes which have buried the Bones of Elephants. 



M. Jean Andre Deluc, son and nephew of the two great men who 

 have rendered the most important services to sreology, has published 

 in the Bibliotheque Universelle of Geneva, for February, 1222, page 

 118, some interesting observations on the state in which the fossil 

 bones of elephants are found lying, and on the causes which have led 

 to their interment. Although these bones are very generally spread 



