Agassiz and His Works. 207 



for ages, fell upon our globe ; it spread over the very 

 countries where these tropical animals had their 

 homes, and so suddenly did it come upon them that 

 they were embalmed beneath masses of snow and 

 ice, without time even for the decay which follows 

 death. The elephant, whose story was told at 

 length in the preceding article, was by no means a 

 solitary specimen ; upon further investigation it was 

 found that the disinterment of these large tropical 

 animals in northern Russia and Asia was no unusual 

 occurrence. Indeed, their frequent discoveries of 

 this kind had given rise among the ignorant inhabi- 

 tants to the singular superstition already alluded to, 

 that gigantic moles lived under the earth, which 

 crumbled away and turned to dust as soon as they 

 came to the upper air. This tradition, no doubt, 

 arose from, the fact that, when in digging they came 

 upon the bodies of these animals, they often found 

 them perfectly preserved under the frozen ground, 

 but the moment they were exposed to heat and 

 light they decayed and fell to pieces at once. Ad- 

 miral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been 

 so valuable to science, tells us that the remains of 

 these animals are heaped up in such quantities in 

 certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed 

 over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the 

 bones of elephants, rhinoceroses, etc. From these 

 facts it would seem that they roamed over all these 

 northern regions in troops as large and numerous as 

 the buffalo herds that wander over our western 

 prairies now. We are indebted to Russian natural- 

 ists, and especially to Rathke, for the most minute 



