FOSSIL REMAINS. 
607 
river in whose banks they do not find the bones of elephants and other large 
animals which cannot now endure the climate of this district, and that all the 
fossil ivory which is collected for sale throughout Siberia is extracted from the 
lofty, precipitous, and sandy banks of the rivers of that country ; that in every 
climate and latitude, from the zone of mountains in central Asia to the frozen 
coasts of the Arctic Ocean, all Siberia abounds with these bones, but that the best 
fossil ivory is found in the frozen lands adjacent to the arctic circle ; that the 
bones of large and small animals lie in some places piled together in great heaps, 
but, in general, they are scattered separately, as if they had been agitated by 
waters, and buried in mud and gravel. 
The term mammoth has been applied indiscriminately to all the largest 
species of fossil animals, and is a word of Tartar origin, meaning simply “ animal 
of the earth.” It is now appropriated exclusively to the fossil elephant, of which 
one species only has been yet established, dififei'ing materially from the two existing 
species, which are limited, one to Asia, the other to Africa. 
Of all the fossil animals that have been ever discovered, the most remarkable 
is the entire carcass of a mammoth, with its flesh, skin, and hair still fresh and 
well preserved, which in the year 1803 fell from the frozen cliff of a peninsula in 
Siberia, near the mouth of the Lena *. Nearly five years elapsed between the 
period when this carcass was first observed by a Tungusian in the thawing cliff, in 
1799, and the moment when it became entirely disengaged, and fell down upon 
the strand, between the shore and the base of the cliff. Here it lay two more years, 
till great part of the flesh was devoured by wolves and bears ; the skeleton was 
then collected by Mr. Adams and sent to Petersburg. Many of the ligaments 
were perfect, and also the head, with its integuments, weighing four hundred and 
fourteen pounds without the tusks, whose weight together was three hundred and 
sixty pounds. Great part of the skin of the body was preserved, and was covered 
with reddish wool and black hairs ; about thirty-six pounds of hair were collected 
from the sand, into which it had been trampled by the bears. 
The following description, by Mr. Adams, of the place in which this mam- 
moth was found will form an interesting subject of comparison with Captain 
Beechey’s account of the cliff in Eschscholtz Bay : “ The place where I found the 
mammoth is about sixty paces distant from the shore, and nearly a hundred 
paces from the escarpment of the ice from which it had fallen. This escarpment 
occupies exactly the middle between the two points of the peninsula, and is two 
miles long ; and in the place where the mammoth was found, this rock has a per- 
* The details of this case were published by Dr. Tilesius in the fifth vol. of the Memoirs of the Academy of 
Petersburg, and also by Mr. Adams in the Journal du Nord, printed at Petersburg in 1807 . 
