156 THE TIME OF THE MAMMOTHS. 
this, in itself a considerable protection against the weather, 
lay a coating of wool, fitting the intervals between the other 
hairs, and enabling the animal to withstand the greatest rigor 
of the climate, which now prevails in this part of Asia. Acute 
observation has supplied us with another evidence of the 
fitness of this elephant to live in the ordinary conditions of 
high latitudes. In the tooth of the specimen, before de- 
scribed, was found a morsel of wood, the remains of the last 
meal made by the creature; the microscope of the botanist 
showed this fragment to belong to a coniferous tree, so that 
the stunted furs of the high north might have supplied food 
for herds of these mammoths. It is not, however, quite cer- 
tain that these animals ever came down to the borders of the 
northern sea, though, as we have seen, they were fitted for 
such a climate as now prevails there; so far as we know 
the remains which are found around the mouths of the 
great rivers of Siberia are always in a position, which 
seems to indicate that they have been swept into their places 
by the river, and may thus have come from any point on 
its course. The fact that spring overtakes the stream at its 
headwaters, filling its channel with the floods of the annual 
melting, while the region near the estuary may be still fro- 
zen solid, renders these Siberian rivers, as all other streams 
which flow towards higher latitudes, peculiarly liable to de- 
structive overflows. Overtaken by these inundations these 
clumsy inhabitants of this region were swept down towards 
the sea and stranded on the perpetually frozen soil of the 
shore; here buried in the mud and ice they soon became 
frozen, and each successive inundation thickened the sheet 
of ice and frozen soil which sealed them from decay. Noth- 
ing but a change of climate or an alteration in the course of 
the stream in such fashion as to disinter the remains can 
ever disclose the innumerable bodies of these ancient mon- 
sters which lie stark and stiff along the waters of that frozen 
sea. When the frequent disinterment of these valuable fos- 
sils, by the falling of the frozen cliffs of the rivers of Siberia, 
