72 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
moth is emphatically entitled to the significant name proposed by 
Geoffrey St. Hilaire, in one of the bright inspirations of his latter 
years, of 4 JDicyclotherium, 1 as having by a * miracle of Providence/ 
survived through two epochs. # The geographical range of its asso¬ 
ciate Rhinoceros tichorhinus, was greatly more restricted. It has 
never been observed in America, nor as yet in Italy. The same 
restriction appears to apply to its range in time; I have seen nothing 
as yet, to satisfy me, that it existed in the Fauna of the ‘ Forest-bed’ 
of Norfolk. The negative evidence, in a case of this kind, is of little 
value, since it proves nothing more than the limit of our positive 
knowledge up to a given time; but the asserted instances of its 
occurrence,')' are regarded by me as erroneous identifications, and as 
belonging to a more ancient extinct species. 
§ 7. Earliest Head-quarters oe the Mammoth—where? 
Another question comes up for discussion. On what ancient 
land was the first dwelling-place of the Mammoth ? Whence did it 
radiate through the vast geographical area included within its ascer¬ 
tained range of habitat ? The prevailing impression, at the present 
time, appears to be in favour of the high land of northern Asia. But 
I know not upon what good grounds it can be sustained. That the 
species existed there in great force, during a long lapse of time, has 
been clearly established; and it seems equally clear, that it spread 
from that area into America, by Behring’s Straits or the Aleutian 
Isles, before the severance of the two continents took place, surviving, 
in North America, down to a date that would correspond with the 
superficial lacustrine marls and ancient peat-bogs of Europe. But 
the cast of the North Asiatic fauna, as shown above, is so entirely 
modern, as to have been regarded by Lartet, as being that of the 
ancestors of our existing European mammalia. The sub-Uralian 
deposits have, as yet, supplied no consistent evidence of Pliocene 
strata, or Pliocene mammalia, by means of which, the Mammoth- 
yielding and auriferous gravels may be synchronized with, or 
differentiated from, the newer Pliocene strata of England, in which 
the Mammoth occurs, along with species of an older age. At present 
there is a wide gap, in the formations other than marine, between the 
Miocene strata along the shores of the Black Sea, which, at Nicolajew 
in the Chersonese, near Odessa, have yielded the greater portion of 
the skeleton of a Mastodon Tapiroides, J and the Ural gravels con¬ 
taining bones of E. primigenius and its usual associates. 
But there are strong grounds to suspect that Pliocene deposits 
exist on the western flanks of the Ural mountains, the geological 
history of which still remains to be unfolded. Pallas, in his ‘ Obser- 
vatio de dentibus molaribus ignoti animalis, &c., ad Uralense 
* Op. cit. Seance, 23 Janv. 1837. 
f Brit. Foss. Mam. pp. 347 ancl 364. 
f Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. Vol. xviii. (Translations, &c.) p. 13. 
