612 
APPENDIX. 
and vegetable creation, until the period arrived in which the elephant and rhinoceros 
inhabited nearly the entire surface of what are now the temperate and frigid zones 
of the northern hemisphere. 
Assuming then on such evidence as I have alluded to, the former high 
temperature of the arctic circle, and knowing from the investment in ice and pre- 
servation of the carcass of the mammoth, that this region was intensely cold at the 
time immediately succeeding its death, and has so continued to the present hour ; 
the point on which we are most in want of decisive evidence is the temperature of 
the climate in which the mammoth lived. It is in violation of existing analogies 
to suppose that any extinct elephant or rhinoceros was more tolerant of cold than 
extinct corallines or turtles; and as this northern region of the earth seems to 
have undergone successive changes from heat to cold, so it is probable that the 
last of these changes was coincident with the extirpation of the mammoth. That 
this last change was sudden is shown by the preservation of the carcass in ice : had 
it been gradual, it might have caused the extinction of the mammoth in the polar 
regions, but would afford no reason for its equal extirpation in lower latitudes ; 
but if sudden and violent, and attended by a general inundation, the temperature 
preceding this catastrophe may have been warm, and that immediately succeeding 
it intensely cold ; and the cause producing this change of climate may also have 
produced an inundation, sufficient to destroy and bury in its ruins the animals 
which then inhabited tbe surface of the earth. 
I shall conclude these observations with quoting in his own words the opinions 
of Cuvier, which have always appeared to me the most correct and most philoso- 
phical that have been yet advanced upon this subject*. 
* Tout rend done extremement probable que les elephans qui ont fourni les os fossiles habitoient 
et vivoient dans les pays Ob Ton trouve aujourd’hui leurs ossemens. 
Ils n’ont pu y disparoltre que par une revolution qui a fait perir tous les individus existans alors, 
ou par un changement de climat qui les a empeche de s’y propager. 
Mais quelle qu’ait ete cette cause, elle a dh etre subite les os et I’ivoire si parfaitement con- 
serves dans les plaines de la Siberie, ne le sont que par le froid qui les y congcle, ou qui en general 
arrete 1 action des elemens sur eux. Si ce froid n’etoit arrive que par degres et avec lenteur, ces 
ossemens, et b plus forte raison les parties inolles dont ils sont encore quelquefois envelopp^s, 
auroient eu le temps de se decomposer comme ceux que I’on trouve dans les pays chauds et temp6res. 
II auroit ete surtout bien impossible qu’un cadavre tout entier, tel que celui que M. Adams a 
decouvert, efit conserve ses chairs et sa peau sans corruption, s’il n’avoit ete enveloppe immediatement 
par les glaces qui nous I’ont conserv6. 
Ainsi toutes les hypotheses d’un refroidissement graduel de la terre, ou d’une variation lente, 
soit dans I’inclinaison, soit dans la position de I’axe du globe, tombent d’elles-memes. 
Cuvier, Ossemens Fossiles, 1821, tom. i. p. 203. 
