410 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[cHAr, 
hide, and hair of the mammoth mummy were enclosed, con¬ 
tained pieces of larch, branches and leaves of the dwarf birch 
{Betula nana), and of two northern species of willow (Salix 
glaum and herbacea)} It appears from this that the climate of 
Siberia at the time when these mammoth-carcases were im¬ 
bedded, was very nearly the same as the present, and as the 
stream in whose neighbourhood the find was made is a com¬ 
paratively inconsiderable tundra river, lying wholly to the north 
of the limit of trees, there is no probability that the carcase 
drifted with the spring ice from the wooded region of Siberia 
towards the north. Schmidt, therefore, supposes that the 
Siberian elephant, if it did not always live in the northern¬ 
most parts of Asia, occasionally wandered thither, in the same 
way that the reindeer now betakes itself to' the coast of the 
Polar Sea. Von Beandt, Von Schmalhausen, and others, had 
besides already shown that the remains of food which were found 
in the hollows of the teeth of the Wilui rhinoceros consisted of 
portions of leaves and needles of species of trees which still 
grow in Siberia.^ 
Soon after the mammoth found on the Gyda tundra had been 
examined by Schmidt, similar finds were examined by Ger¬ 
hard VON Maydell, at three different places between the rivers 
Kolyma and Indigirka, about a hundred kilometres from the 
Polar Sea. With respect to these finds I can only refer to a 
paper by L. voN Scheenck in the Bulletin of the St. Petersburg 
Academy, T. XVI. 1871, p. 147. 
Under the guidance of natives I collected in 1876 at the 
confluence of the river Mesenkin with the Yenisej, in 71° 28' 
N.L., some fragments of bones and pieces of the hide of a 
^ Friedrich Schmidt, WissenscJiaftliche Mesultate der zur Aufmchung elnes 
Mammuthcadavers ausgesandten Expedition {Mem. de VAcad, de St. Peters- 
hourg, Ser. VIL T. XVIII. No. 1, 1872). 
^ Brandt, Berichte der preussiscken Alcad. der Wissenchaften^ 1846, p. 224. 
Von Schmalhausen, Bull, de VAcad. de St. Petsrsbourg^ T. XXII. p. 291. 
