1890.] Geology and Paleontology. 849 
The Chinese accounts of a monster animal as given in the Pent’ sao could 
not, if taken alone, be regarded as agreeing with the Siberian mam- 
moth except in a rough way, yet they are very important. Early in 
this century the remains of that animal were found in so many parts 
of Siberia, and the ivory was of such great commercial value that the 
whole scientific world was interested. Cuvier in France was absor 
in the contemplation of the remarkable bones submitted to him, and 
decided that as the mammoth was met with often with the flesh unde- 
cayed, there must have been a sudden change of climate from tem- 
perate to extremely cold to account for the frozen condition in which 
the remains were found. Klaproth, who was then at Kiachta, visited 
the Chinese drug shops and found that the bones were known to the 
Chinese there. They gave him the name of the animal as it was 
recorded in the Pent’sao. It was he that suggested that the throne of 
ivory of the Mongol Emperors was formed of the tusks and teeth of 
the Siberian mammoth, and that Chinese traders for two thousand 
years would be ready to buy on any occasion the ivory which was 
from time to time discovered and brought away. He went home to 
Berlin, and made known to the learned world that the Chinese had 
accounts of the animal. The passages he translated are apparently 
those which are found in the Pent’ sao, in the chapter on the class Shu, 
which includes the Rodentia with the squirrel, sable, ermine, and wea- 
There can be no doubt that the mammoth, and possibly other 
fossil animals known to the Chinese, are assigned to the class Shz, 
because they were supposed to hide themselves in the soil of cultivated 
fields, and to have died underground in the position where their bones 
were afterwards found. 
In a work published in 1887, ‘‘ Mammoths and the Flood," by 
Henry Howorth, M.P., author of ** A History of the Mongols," the 
attempt is made to prove that the change of the Siberian climate from 
mild to severe was sudden. Lyell’s uniformitarian doctrine is op- 
posed. Yet the evidence from China of a gradual change of climate 
in that country was not known to this author, and if he had had this 
evidence before him, showing as it does that there is a very slow 
refrigeration taking place, causing gradual changes in the vegetable 
as well as the animal world, he might have modified his theory. Per- 
haps the best form for the hypothesis to assume is that of a rapid local 
refrigeration in Siberia, joined with a slow refrigeration generally over 
the Asiatic continent. The Chinese facts on climate point distinctly 
to a slow refrigeration, but do not in any way suggest a sudden catas- 
trophe by which the heat shown by the thermometer was reduced to a 
