270 ON THE FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADRUPEDS. 



Frozen Ocean, and which are prodigiously swollen at the breaking up 

 of the ice, detach, undermine, and carry away with them great portions 

 of their banks, and thus throw up, from year to year, bones which had 

 till then lay concealed ; and, independent of this, quantities are found in 

 digging wells and foundations. From this latter circumstance it is 

 impossible to entertain the opinion that they have been merely car- 

 ried down by those streams from the mountains adjoining India, 

 where elephants may exist in the natural state down to the present 

 day, as the late Mr. Patrin imagined *. Besides this, they are found 

 in as great abundance along the Wolga, the Don, and the Jaik, which 

 flow from the north, and along the Lena, the Indighirska, the Kolyma, 

 and even the Anadir f, which descend from the very cold mountains of 

 Chinese Tartary, where most certainly there are no elephants, as along 

 the Obi, the Jenissei, and its tributary streams. Of the latter, the 

 Irtisch alone approaches near enough to the mountains of Thibet to 

 countenance the application of this hypothesis with any thing like the 

 appearance of probability. It was on the banks of the Indighirska that 

 the splendid specimen of a skull was found, which is described by 

 Messerschmidt, and of which we shall give an engraving. 



They are found even in the remote region of the peninsula of Kam- 

 tchatka, whither they could not have proceeded from India by any 

 possible means, without taking a long circuitous course +. 



There is not, observes M. Pallas §, in the whole extent of Asiatic 

 Russia, from the Don or Tanais to the extremity of the promontory of 

 Tchutchis, a single stream, a single river, particularly those which 

 flow through the plains, whose banks or bed have not yielded the bones 

 of elephants and of other animals which were strangers to the climate. 



But the more elevated regions, the primitive and schistous chains, are 

 destitute of them as well as of marine petrifactions, while the lower 

 declivities, and the great slimy and sandy plains, invariably yield them 

 wherever they are intersected by rivers or streams ; a circumstance 

 which proves that they would be found in as great quantities in every 

 part of their wide extent, if there was the same opportunity of investi- 

 gation. Again, they are found in very inconsiderable quantities in 

 low and swampy grounds : thus, the Obi, which at times flows along 

 through low and swampy forests, and at others dashes through craggy 

 and precipitous banks, yields them in the latter places alone : " Ubi ad- 

 jacentes colles arenosi preeruptam ripam efficiunt," (where theproximity 

 of sand hills makes the banks precipitous). Strahlenberg had made the 

 same observation several years before, on the manner in which these 

 bones are left behind by inundations [|. They are found in every lati- 

 tude. The northern countries yield the best ivory, because it has been 

 less exposed to the action of the elements. 



Leaving out of the question this prodigious abundance, a circum- 



• Patrin's Natural History of Minerals, vol. v, p . 391. New Dictionary of Natu- 

 ral Sciences, Art. Fossils. 



f Pall. Nov. Com. Petrop., xiii, p. 471. 



X Tilesius' Memoirs of the Academy of Petersburg, vol. v, p. 423, note. 



§ Nov. Com. Petrop., vol. xvii, 1772, p. 576. 



|| Strablenberg, passage before quoted. 



