266 



CHARLES DARWIN 



under the equable climate of the southern hemisphere, than 

 under the extreme climate of the northern continents. 



The case of the sailor's body perfectly preserved in the icy 

 soil of the South Shetland Islands (lat. 62 0 to 63° S.), in a 

 rather lower latitude than that (lat. 64 0 N.) under which 

 Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros in Siberia, is very inter- 

 esting. Although it is a fallacy, as I have endeavoured to 

 show in a former chapter, to suppose that the larger quadru- 

 peds require a luxuriant vegetation for their support, never- 

 theless it is important to find in the South Shetland Islands, 

 a frozen under-soil within 360 miles of the forest-clad islands 

 near Cape Horn, where, as far as the bulk of vegetation is 

 concerned, any number of great quadrupeds might be sup- 

 ported. The perfect preservation of the carcasses of the 

 Siberian elephants and rhinoceroses is certainly one of the 

 most wonderful facts in geology; but independently of the 

 imagined difficulty of supplying them with food from the 

 adjoining countries, the whole case is not, I think, so per- 

 plexing as it has generally been considered. The plains of 

 Siberia, like those of the Pampas, appear to have been formed 

 under the sea, into which rivers brought down the bodies 

 of many animals; of the greater number of these, only the 

 skeletons have been preserved, but of others the perfect car- 

 cass. Now, it is known that in the shallow sea on the Arctic 

 coast of America the bottom freezes," and does not thaw in 

 spring so s/)on as the surface of the land; moreover at 

 greater depths, where the bottom of the sea does not freeze, 

 the mud a few feet beneath the top layer might remain even 

 in summer below 32 0 , as in the case on the land with the soil 

 at the depth of a few feet. At still greater depths, the tem- 

 perature of the mud and water would probably not be low 

 enough to preserve the flesh; and hence, carcasses drifted 

 beyond the shallow parts near an Arctic coast, would have 

 only their skeletons preserved : now in the extreme northern 

 parts of Siberia bones are infinitely numerous, so that even 

 islets are said to be almost composed of them; 20 and those 

 islets lie no less than ten degrees of latitude north of the 

 place where Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros. On the other 



Messrs. Dease and Simpson, in Geograph. Journ., vol. viii. pp. 218 

 and 220. 



^Cuvier (Ossemens Fossiles, torn. i. p. 151), from Billing's Voyage. 



