PRESERVATION OF ELEPHANTS IN HIGH NORTH LATITUDES. 183 
loam and gravel, and occur but seldom in entire skeletons, except in 
the frozen regions of Russia and Siberia. Over these countries their 
dispersion also is universal. There is not, says Pallas, in all Asiatic 
Russia, from the Don to the extremity of the promontory of Tchut- 
chis, a stream or river in the banks of which they do not find 
elephants and other animals now strangers to that climate. These 
are washed out by the violent floods arising from the thaw of the 
snows, and have attracted universally the attention of the natives, 
who collect annually the elephants’ tusks to sell as ivory. I have 
already mentioned the elephants’ teeth found by Kotzebue, in the ice¬ 
berg, near Behring’s Straits, and the extraordinary quantity of similar 
bones and teeth of elephants and oxen in the islands of mud and ice, 
at the mouth of the Lena. For a detailed account of these, and of 
the carcase found entire in the ice of Tungusia, and which is now 
preserved at Petersburg, I must refer to M. Cuvier’s Animaux Fossiles, 
or to the translation of his 4 Essay on the Theory of the Earth,’ 
published by Mr. Jameson *. Mr. Mitchell, in his translation of this 
same essay, has shown the extent to which this extinct species of 
elephant prevails in North America. Humboldt, also, has found it 
on the plains of Mexico, and in the province of Quito. 
How is it possible to explain the general dispersion of all these 
* A translation of the account given of this animal, in the Memoirs of the Imperial 
Academy of Sciences, at Petersburg, accompanied by an engraving of the entire skeleton, 
with the flesh still adhering to the head, has been published in a small Tract of 15 pages, 
by Mr. Phillips, George-yard, Lombard-street, 1819. Its two tusks together weighed 
360 pounds. 
