FALCONER ON THE AMERICAN FOSSIL ELEPHANT. 
113 
not obliged to suppose, that in his southern habit he was thus 
clad. The dermal appendages are very variable and adaptive, ac¬ 
cording to climate. The fine silky fleece, from which the Cashmeer 
shawls are wove, is abundantly developed at the roots of the long 
hairs of the domestic goat in the plains of Tibet, at, and upwards 
of 16,000 feet above the level of the sea, where a highly rarified 
atmosphere is combined with severe winter cold. It grows also, on 
the Kiang, the Yak, Cervus Wallichii, the Brown Bear of high ele¬ 
vations in the Himalayah, and on the Mastiff Dog of Tibet. But it 
disappears entirely from the same Goat, and from the Dog, in the 
valley of Cashmeer. The short crisp wool of the Siberian Mammoth, 
which seems to have been the most protective portion of his fur, 
may, in like manner, have disappeared from the variety that lived in 
the valley of the Tiber, while the bristles and long coarse hair were 
more or less retained ; and it is in the highest degree probable, that 
the species presented varieties of external form, dependant on the 
nature of the dermal clothing, far exceeding those which are seen in 
existing Elephants. That the Siberian Mammoth migrated periodi¬ 
cally, from the more southern forests, towards the Polar sea, during 
summer, as his surviving cotemporaries the Musk Ox and Beindeer 
now do, is also highly probable ; * but we have no grounds to be¬ 
lieve, that the Mammoth of Southern Europe, ever made migrations 
to the north of the Alps. 
The same constitutional elasticity, which enabled the Mammoth 
to endure such a variety of climates, and to spread over such a vast 
geographical area, necessarily extended to his alimentary habits. I 
have already called attention to the remarkable constancy in the 
specific characters of the molar teeth, alike in the pre-glacial and 
post-glacial, in the extreme northern and the extreme southern 
forms. Their adaptation was not special to the vegetation merely 
of Siberia, but general to that of every region over which the species 
spread; and up to the present time, not a plausible conjecture even, 
has been offered, as to the class of vegetable matters which they most 
affected. The question of the food of the species has not been, in 
the least, advanced since the discovery by Adams, of the ice-pre¬ 
served carcass on the banks of the Lena in 1803, or since philo¬ 
sophic doubts were expressed by Eleming on the subject in 1829.f 
Wherever a certain result has been arrived at, regarding the alimen¬ 
tary habits of the extinct Mammalia of the Glacial period, it has 
only been by discovering the remains of the food itself in some of 
the organs of digestion. We have the authority of Brandt for the 
fact, that he extracted from the pits of the molar teeth of the Rhino¬ 
ceros tichorhinus , of which the carcass was obtained by Pallas from 
the banks of the Wiljui, part of the albuminous seed of a Polygoneous 
plant, portions of Pine leaves, and minute fragments of Coniferous 
* Richardson. Polar Regions. 1861, pp. 275 and 296. 
t Ediub. New Phil. Journ. 1829, Vol. 6. p. 285. 
N. H. R.—1863. I 
