186 
for it is stated that on the coast of Norfolk alone the fisher- 
men, in trawling for oysters, fished up, between 1820 and 
1833, no less than two thousand molar teeth of elephants, and 
these, according to Sir Charles Lyell, of not less than three 
species. If we give credence to the view of geologists that in 
the Pleistocene period the whole of the shore until we pass the 
depth of one hundred fathoms was dry land, we should indeed 
recall magnificent plains of pasture for these noble creatures 
and appropriate hunting-ground for their enemies. 
But this is as nothing compared to the plains of Siberia. 
“ New Siberia and the isle of Lachou are for the most part 
only an agglomeration of sand, ice, and elephant teeth. ” “At 
every tempest, the sea casts ashore new quantities of mam- 
moths’ tusks, and the inhabitants of Siberia carry on a profit- 
able commerce in this fossil ivory. Every year during the sum- 
mer innumerable fishermen’s barks direct their course towards 
this “isle of bones’; and during winter immense cai’avans 
take the same route — all the convoys drawn by dogs — return- 
ing charged with the tusks of the mammoth, each weighing 
from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds” 
Think of the apparatus of bone and muscle requisite to wield 
this tremendous double “ sword.” 
The fossil ivory thus withdrawn from the frozen north is 
imported into China and Europe, where it is employed for the 
same purposes as ordinary ivory. 
The “isle of bones ” has served as a quarry of this valuable 
material for export to China for five hundred years, and it has 
been exported to Europe for upwards of a hundred, but the 
supply from these strange mines remains undiminished. 
All this wealth of animal life seems suddenly and violently 
to have come to an end by the waters of a deluge.* 
Erman remarks that the alluvial deposits of Siberia, in 
■which are found the bones of the mammoth and leaves and 
twigs of the birch and willow, consist to the depth, of one 
hundred feel of strata of loam, fine sand, and magnetic sand, 
and that they have been deposited from waters which at one 
time, and it may be presumed suddenly, overflowed the whole 
country as far as the Polar Sea. It is only in the lower strata 
of the New Siberian wood-hills (composed largely of drift- 
wood) that the trunks have that position which they would 
assume in swimming or sinking undisturbed. On the summit 
of the hills they lie finny upon one another in the wildest 
disorder , forced upright in spite of gravitation, and with their 
* The Epoch of the Mammoth, Southall, 1878. 
