SUBJECT OF GREAT FOSSIL MAMMALIA CONCLUDED. 
505 
change of land and water 1 , and other difficulties dependent on a limited subsist- 
ence, the Aurochs or Zubr of Lithuania was not, from his activity and hardy habits, 
more likely to have survived such oscillations, than his unwieldy associates, the 
mammoth, mastodon and rhinoceros. 
In terminating the subject of the entombment and dispersion of the great races 
of Mammalia, we may remind our readers, that in our endeavours to point out the 
ancient physical geographical features of the Ural Mountains, and the adjacent 
tracts of Siberia, geological proofs have been adduced to show, that a vast portion ot 
that region having been entirely exempt from all oceanic influence during ancient 
periods of long duration, was thereby eminently qualified to be the residence of such 
animals during the whole of their existence. It has further been proved, that the 
production of gold veins, and the elevations of the Ural, which have given to these 
mountains their present height and relief, are phsenomena of a comparatively 
recent date, — phsenomena which, in lowering the temperature of the great region 
so affected, were, we have little doubt, the chief causes of the final destruction of 
the mammoths, which, with all their adaptation to existence in northern latitudes, 
could scarcely be supposed to have been capable of long enduring the want of 
sustenance incident to Siberian winters of the present period. 
When we turn from the great Siberian continent, which anterior to its elevation 
was their chief abode, and look to other parts of Europe where their remains also 
occur, how remarkable is it, that we find the number of these creatures to be 
justly proportionate to the magnitude of the ancient masses of land which the 
labours of geologists have defined ! Take the British Isles, for example, and let 
all their low recently elevated districts be submerged ; let, in short, England be 
viewed as the comparatively small island she was, when the ancient estuary of the 
Thames, including the plains of Hyde Park, Chelsea, Hounslow and Uxbridge 
were under the waters, — when the Severn extended far into the heart of the king- 
dom, and large eastern tracts of the island were submerged, and there will then 
remain but moderate-sized feeding grounds for the great quadrupeds whose bones 
are found in the gravel of the adjacent rivers and estuaries. This limited area 
of subsistence could necessarily only keep up a small stock of such animals ; and 
just as we might expect, the remains of British mammoths occur in very small 
numbers indeed, when compared with those ot the gieat charnel-houses in Siberia, 
4 In the next chapter reasons will he assigned to induce the belief that the surface of Russia in Europe 
was depressed at that period. 
