ON TEE KANGE OF THE MAMMOTH. 
285 
in Europe before the glacial epoch, his opinion being based 
upon certain remains obtained from the Norfolk coast, by Miss 
Gurney, the Eev. S. W. Kring, F.G.S., and the Eev. John 
Gum, F.G.S., none of which were found in situ. Their pre- 
glacial age is assumed from their being encrusted with small 
patches of peroxide of iron, which strongly resemble those on 
the specimens of the forest bed. That the presence of this is 
of no value, I have conclusive evidence before me, as I write, 
in a fragment of bottle glass, imbedded in feruginous matrix, 
picked up at Walton, and indistinguishable from that on a jaw 
of R. etruscus, from the forest bed of Lowestoft. The in- 
ference, therefore, must inevitably follow, that the peroxide of 
iron on the Mammoth remains cast up by the wave is no guide 
to their gisement, and consequently that the evidence adduced 
in favour of the preglacial age of the Mammoth in Britain, is 
altogether valueless. In Britain, as in the continent of Europe, 
the Mammoth is characteristic of post-glacial times. In Siberia, 
and America, it is very probable that it lived both before its 
appearance in, and after its departure from Europe. 
The problem of its extinction now comes before us. It 
abounded in post-glacial Europe, while, before the dawn of the 
pre-historic epoch, it had vanished away. This cannot be 
accounted for by geographical changes, by which its habitat 
became restricted, and by which, consequently, the competition 
for life between it and the other herbivores grew more severe, 
because of the vast area left comparatively intact in northern 
Asia and America. Nor does an appeal to climatal change help 
at all, for there is clear proof that the animal possessed a great 
elasticity of constitution. In the Siberian woodlands it fed on 
the Scotch hr ; in the swamps of Kentucky it was surrounded 
by the vegetation of the temperate zone, identical with that 
now living in the same spot. In the valley of the Tiber, also, 
we cannot suppose that it would be subjected to the severity of 
an Arctic winter. M. Lartet’s explanation, that it disappeared 
“ en conformite sans doute des lois qui, en reglant la longevite 
des individus, limitent en meme temps la duree des especes,”"^ 
leaves the problem unsolved, and hampered with a very wide 
question, as to whether the life of a species obeys the same laws 
as that of an individual. It is, however, by no means difficult 
to be grappled with. The same cause that has banished the 
brown bear and wolf from Britain, the bison and urus from 
Germany, the dinornis from New Zealand, is adequate, also, to 
will be seen, by the compaiison of these passages, that Dr. Falconer was by 
no means certain of the exact horizon of the Mammoth, 
* Comptes rendus, 1858, p. 413. 
YOL. YII. — NO. XXYIir. 
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