FOSSIL QUADRUPEDS OF EUROPEAN RUSSIA. 
501 
Mountains and Siberia, the remains of mammoths and other lost quadrupeds have 
been found over very considerable regions of Russia in Europe. Pallas had long 
ago mentioned several localities where such mammalian remains have been ob- 
served. Though we ourselves are acquainted with situations in which they have 
been found in the governments of Moscow, Vladimir, Perm, &c., we best know 
them through the collections formed in the Imperial Museum of Natural History 
of Moscow, where, under the auspices and direction of our venerable friend Dr. 
Fischer, they have obtained a just celebrity. 
In Russia, as in every other great region which has been examined, the races of 
lost mammals present some types which connect her former lands with those of 
other countries, associated with forms which are peculiar to her. Thus, whilst in 
common with America, Russia contains the mammoth and mastodon, and, in 
common with Britain, the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Trogonthe- 
rium, beaver, bear, elk, &c., she once possessed generic forms, as Merycotherium 
and Elasmotherium, which have not, hitherto, been found elsewhere. Russia is, 
indeed, as peculiar in her possession of the latter extraordinary pachyderm as 
South America is for the Mylodon and Glyptodon 1 . 
The lost races of mammals which have been detected in Russia in Europe, are 
found, we have said, in exactly the same sort of detritus as that in which they 
occur in the flat northern tracts of Siberia, or near the mouths of its great rivers. 
In all the central and southern parts of European Russia, there are no high ridges 
of elevation, and consequently no coarse local detritus, like that on the flanks 
of the Ural, so that the mammoth alluvium assumes the same aspect as in 
the distant plains of Siberia, where it is equally removed from disturbing causes. 
Here, however, it is equally evident, that such alluvium has been the result of 
currents of water, for it is piled up, and often tumultuously, in great thicknesses, 
and constitutes the chief banks of most of the streams, as well as the covering of 
numerous plateaux. Occasionally, indeed, the coarser clay drift passes upwards 
into finely levigated silt, which in certain tracts may be represented by the rich 
' The geological position of Lophiodon Sibericum, which is stated to have been found in a calcareous 
formation in the government of Orenburg, is doubtful ; if it be miocene or eocene, it accords with the beds 
containing Lophiodon in Continental Europe and England. Elasmotherium may be said to be as peculiar 
to Russia as Mylodon, &c. to South America ; but we are informed by Professor Owen, that there are no 
existing analogues in Siberia to illustrate the Elasmotherium, like the Sloths and Armadillos of South 
America, which explain the affinities of the Megatherian animals. See Professor Owen s most remark- 
able work on the Mylodon (4to. London, 1842). 
3 T 
