506 
SUBJECT OF GREAT FOSSIL MAMMALIA CONCLUDED. 
into which their bones had been carried down during countless ages, from the largest 
mass of surface which geological inquiries have yet showm to have been dry land 
during that epoch. 
In treating this subject, we have been gradually led on to speculate on features 
which connect the foimei with the present surface of a large portion of the earth, 
and have little othei reference to submarine conditions, than the elevation into land 
of the bottoms ol estuaries and sea- shores on the edge of that continent. In the 
next chapter, however, we must entirely change the scene, by returning to the con- 
sideration of Russia in Europe, nearly the whole of whose superficies presents 
phenomena of a very different class, which we shall endeavour to show, can alone 
have been produced by very powerful currents and long-continued submersion 
under the waters of the sea,— phsenomena which, we think, prevailed during the 
period when the great mammalia were the inhabitants of Siberia and certain 
southern tracts to which we have alluded. 
P.S. It may seem remarkable, that in a region like Russia, so extensively tenanted by bears, when 
first reclaimed by man, we should scarcely have alluded to their occurrence during a former condition of 
the surface. Their bones, however, have been found, as weU as those of horses, elks and many other 
animals, on whose remains we have not thought it necessary to expatiate, as they are mere repetitions of 
a phenomenon common to other parts of Europe. Judging from the analogy of other countries, where 
the bones of the Ursus spelaus have usually been found in rocky caverns, it is evident, that from the nature 
of her surface, Russia in Europe offers very few spots where the geologist might hope to find them. We 
have, however, alluded to caverns in the Ural Mountains and Siberia (the caves of Yermac on the Tchus- 
sovaya and others on the Issetz, pp. 365 and 368), which being in positions far above the highest floods 
and on precipitous faces of palsozmc limestone, would, if explored by some Russian Buckland, afford, we 
have little doubt, the remains of extinct animals. 
