June^ 1834. animals preserved in ice. 



29S 



thousand dangers^ and only meet an ocean strewed with 

 mountain-masses of ice. 



At the Ferroe islands (or we may say a little to the south- 

 ward of the Wiljui^ where Pallas found (in lat. 64° N.) the 

 frozen rhinoceros)^ a body buried under the surface of the 

 soil would undergo so little decomposition^ that years after- 

 wards (as in the instance mentioned at South Shetland, 

 62°-63° S.), every feature might be recognised perfect and 

 unchanged. I particularly allude to this circumstance, 

 because the case of the Siberian animals preserved with 

 their flesh in the ice, off'ers the same apparent difficulty 

 with the glaciers ; namely, the union in the same hemi- 

 sphere of a climate in some senses severe, with one allow- 

 ing of the life of those forms which at present, although 

 abounding ivithout the tropics, do not approach the frozen 

 zones. 



The perfect preservation of the Siberian animals, perhaps 

 presented, till within a few years, one of the most difficult 

 problems which geology ever attempted to solve. On the 

 one hand it was granted, that the carcasses had not been 

 drifted from any great distance by any tumultuous deluge, and 

 on the other it was assumed as certain, that when the animals 

 lived, the climate must have been so totally different, that 

 the presence of ice in the vicinity was as incredible, as would 

 be the freezing of the Ganges. Mr. Lyell in his " Principles 

 of Geology has thrown the greatest light on this subject, 

 by indicating the northerly course of the existing rivers with 

 the probability that they formerly carried carcasses in the 

 same direction ; by showing (from Humboldt) how far the 

 inhabitants of the hottest countries sometimes wander; by 

 insisting on the caution necessary in judging of habits between 

 animals of the same genius, when the species are not identical ; 

 and especially by bringing forward in the clearest manner the 

 probable change from an insular to an extreme climate, as the 



* In the fourth and subsequent editions. 



