496 
CONDITIONS OF MAMMOTH BURIAL EXPLAINED. 
other European countries. Why then is it improbable, that large elephants, with 
a peculiarly thick integument, a close coating of wool and much long shaggy hair, 
should have also been the occupants of wide tracts of Northern Europe and Asia 1 ? 
At one time it was deemed expedient to imagine a sudden fall of temperature in 
order to account for the peculiar conservation of these creatures, by which they were 
supposed to have been at once frozen up in the mud into which they had been 
washed, or the morasses into which they had sunk. 
The discovery, indeed, of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus by Pallas, with its skin and 
flesh adherent, upon the banks of the Viljni, a tributary of the Lena (a portion of 
this rhinoceros, with the skin and hair adherent to the sides of the head, are 
now to be seen in the Museum of Natural History at St. Petersburg), and still 
more the subsequent acquisition of the entire carcass of a mammoth, on the banks 
of the Lena in lat. 70° N., by Mr. Adams, the details relating to which have been 
so fully given by geologists of all countries, naturally, indeed, led to such ideas. 
Convinced, by their perfect preservation, that these animals must have lived in 
or near the countries where their bones are found, Cuvier declared it to be his opi- 
nion, that they must have disappeared by a revolution which at once destroyed 
all the individuals, accompanied by a sudden change of climate. 
In England this view was very ably sustained by Dr. Buckland, and particularly in 
his memoir on the fossil remains which occur in Eschscholtz Bay, and other places 
on the east side of Behring’s Straits 2 , where vast quantities of mammoths’ bones 
occur in mud cliffs, apparently similar to those of the mouths of the Lena and 
other great rivers in Northern Siberia. So long as geologists were compelled to 
argue upon the nature and habits of the mammoth, as if it were similar to an 
Asiatic elephant, the opinions of such great masters were necessarily dominant. 
Mr. Lyell had, however, the courage to lead the way in taking a new and highly 
philosophic view of the subject by suggesting, that the peculiar covering of these 
great mammals rendered them fit inhabitants of a northern climate, and that no 
greater catastrophes were required to account for their destruction, than the gradual 
elevation of large masses of Siberia, which laying dry the low shores and estuaries 
1 This coating, Dr. Fleming has well remarked, was probably as impenetrable to rain and cold as that 
of the musk ox of the polar circle, Edinb. New Phil. Journ., No. 12, p. 2S5. 
5 See Beechey’s Voyage to the Pacific, vol. ii. Appendix, p. 593. Besides the abundant remains of 
mammoths. Dr. Buckland describes those of Bos Urus, deer and horse. 1 hey occur in cliffs of mud and 
sand about 90 feet high, which are usually much congealed and frozen. 
