ON THE FOSSIL EONES OF THE ELEPHANT. 273 



Facts like these, so perfect in their details, and so well authenticated, 

 no longer leave us any room to doubt the veracity of prior testimony 

 with regard to the remains of the soft parts of the mammoth being 

 preserved by the frost ; at the same time that they prove that these 

 animals must have been encompassed by the ice at the very moment 

 of their death. 



To these general remarks I shall subjoin a hasty notice of the prin- 

 cipal districts in Asiatic Russia, where the bones of elephants have 

 been discovered. I have already noticed those found in the bason of 

 the Wolga. To these I would add those found between the Wolga 

 and the Swiaga and along the Kama, where they are mixed with 

 marine shells *, those of the river Irguin |, and those presented by M. 

 Macquart to the Board of Mines, which were mixed with the bones 

 of the rhinoceros. It was doubtless in the Wolga, also, that the thigh 

 was found which the astronomer Delille brought with him from 

 Casan, and which is described by M. Daubenton |. M. Pallas gives 

 a long catalogue of bones, tusks, and molar teeth of the elephant 

 and rhinoceros, sent from that province to Petersburg, in 1776 and 

 1779 §, which were also found on the banks of the Swiaga. 



Our journals have given an account of an entire skeleton dug out 

 of the earth near Struchow, in the province of Casan ||. 



J. Chr. Richter had a molar from the neighbourhood of Astracan^]". 



The Jaik is continually disengaging them from its banks, which are 

 formed of a yellowish slime, interspersed with shells, and the inhabit- 

 ants preserve them with superstitious reverence **. 



M. Pallas saw some at Kalmikova on the Jaik, in which he tells 

 us they find some from time to time ff. 



Delille also brought some fragments from this river to the Museum J J. 



The bason of the Obi abounds with them. The Samoides carry on 

 a regular traffic in tusks at Beresova. They gather them in the im- 

 mense naked plains, which stretch along to the Frozen Ocean, and 

 abound with shells §§. There is also an enormous heap of them at 

 Kutschewarkoi on the Obi ||||. 



Pallas is in possession of a molar and a great number of bones found 

 over against Obdorsk, near the mouth of that river ^J. 



Strahlenberg mentions an enormous skeleton found near the lake 

 Tzana, between the Irtisch and the Obi ***. 



The Irtisch is one of the principal branches of the Obi, and per- 

 haps it is this river as well as its tributaries, the Tobol, the Toura, the 



* Pallas' Nov. Com. Petrop., vol. xvii, p. 581. 



f Pallas' Travels in Russia, French Trans. Svo., p. 283. 



% Natural History, vol. xi, and No. 1034, and Mem. Acad, of Sc. for 1762. 



§ Nene Nordische Beytreege, vol. i, page 175, &c. 



|| Magasin Encyclopedique, May> 1806, p. 169. 



^| Mus. Richter, p. 258. 



** Pallas' Nov. Com. Petrop., vol. xvii, p. 584. 



XT Travels, vol. ii, p. 271. 



XX Nat. Hist. vol. xi, No. mxxxvii. 



§§ Nov. Com. xvii, p. 584. 



HII Ibid, p. 578. 



Tf Travels, vol. v, p. 116. 



*** Strahlenberg, Eng. Trans., p. 404. 



