26*8 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



it would appear, had not then been informed of the quantities found in 

 Siberia, attributed to Alexander*. 



In fact, there is an enormous heap of those bones, as well as of those 

 of other animals, near the town of Kostynsk, on the banks of the Tanais 

 or Don f- 



M. Pallas, in his late Travels in the Southern Provinces of Russia, 

 records instances of discoveries made* in several places between the 

 Tanais and the Wolga, such as tbe neighbourhood of Penza J and other 

 places near to the Wolga § . 



It was from a sandy ferruginous bed near the Wolga, that the head, 

 four feet long, was exhumed, which was presented to the Academy of 

 Petersburg, by the Count de Puschkin, an engraving of which is given 

 by Tilesius in the Memoirs of that Academy ||. 



The Count Maison, a French officer in the Russian service, who is 

 Governor of Nogais Tartary, transmitted to the King's Museum, 

 through the Chevalier Gamba, French consul at Taganrog, a portion of 

 the upper extremity of a thigh, exhumed from a depth of forty-five 

 feet, near Melochnye Vodi, a little river which falls into the Palus 

 Mseotis, and one of those which has been supposed to be the Gerrhus 

 of Herodotus. This fragment indicates an animal from fourteen to 

 fifteen feet high. At a very remote period, Phlegonus of Taralles, on 

 the authority of Theopompus of Sinope, mentioned the circumstance of 

 a skeleton, twenty-four cubits in length, having been thrown up by an 

 earthquake, near the Cimmserian Bosphorus %, the bones of which 

 were thrown into the Palus Mseotis. 



It is probable, too, that the gigantic animal, the remains of which 

 were cast on shore by the sea, near Azof, was also an elephant. The 

 lower jaw of which, thirty pounds in weight, is deposited in the 

 Museum of the Academy at Petersburg**. It is not a little singular 

 that this learned society should mention it in their Memoirs, without 

 positively determining its species. 



As for what may properly be denominated Asiatic Russia, the uni- 

 versal testimony of travellers and naturalists concurs in representing it 

 as being literally surcharged with these enormous spoils ft- 



So general is this phenomenon, that the inhabitants of Siberia have 

 invented a fable to explain it. They have imagined that these bones 

 and tusks belong to a subterraneous animal, whose manner of living is 

 similar to that of the mole, but which cannot behold the light of day 

 with impunity. They have called this animal the mammotit or the mam- 

 mouth, derived, as some would have it, from the word mamma, signifying 

 earth in some Tartar dialect ++; and, according to others, from the Ara- 



* Lebrun's Travels to the East Indies, p. 65. 



t Pall. Nov. Com. Petrop.,xvii, p. 578. Gmel., Travels in Siberia, in Germ., vol. i, 

 p. 34. 



X French Translation, vol. i, p. 41. 



§ Ibid, pp. 93, 94, 101, 102. 



|| Ibid., volume v, pi. xi. 



"jf Phlegonus of Tralbes, De Rebus Mirabilius, chap. xix. 



** Novo Act. Petrop., vol. xiii, pp. 23 and 33. 



ft See Ludolf's Gram. Russ. Isbrand Ides, Laurent Lang, Sam. Bernh. Muller, 

 Strahlenberg, Gmelin, Pallas, &c. 



XX Pallas's passage before cited. 



