and as no such animals are ever seen on the surface of the ground in those regions, it is not unnatural for the ignorant peasants to suppose them to be a species of gigantic mole, which still lives and burrows in the earth. The able historian, Müller, who resided at Moscow in 1779, admitted that he was of the same opinion.

About the year 1799, a large object was observed by some fishermen, near the mouth of the Lena, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, to project from an icy bank, but beyond the reach of examination. For several following seasons the same object was remarked, and every year a little more disengaged from its icy bed, by the slow melting of the ice during the short summers. At length, in 1803, it became entirely detached, and the enormous carcase of a mammoth fell upon the sand bank below. This remarkable specimen was quite entire when it first fell, and the flesh so well preserved, that it was greedily devoured by the white bears, and by the dogs of the fishermen.* In 1806,

* It may appear to some, an improbable part of the history of this remarkable fossil, that any animal substance could have so long resisted decomposition, when acted upon by a solar heat, capable of melting the ice in which it was embedded. But it must be considered, that, in those high northern latitudes, as in the great atmospheric elevations

the remains of this carcase were examined by Mr. Adams, a Member of the Academy of St. Petersburg, when the greater part of the bones, and a large portion of the skin, yet remained. The brain was then still within the skull, but shrunk and dried up; and one of the ears was well preserved, retaining a tuft of strong bristly hair. The animal was a male, and is described as having had a sort of mane on its neck. As the description of Mr. Adams, however, was given nearly three years after the body fell on the sands, and as it had been partially exposed to the atmosphere during several years more, there can be little doubt that, if it had been dug out of its icy bed when first seen in 1799, we should have had a complete and minute description and drawing of one species of the antediluvian elephant.

Much stress has been laid by naturalists, whose theories of the earth required the aid of such evidence, on the remarkable shaggy coat of hair, with a species of wool at the roots, with

of mountain ridges, in the regions of eternal snow, the air is of so rare and dry a nature, that the decomposition of animal substances can scarcely take place under any circumstances. It is true, that the direct rays of the sun act, in such situations, for a short time, with great power. But a general heat is never produced, such as occasions rapid fermentation in the equatorial and temperate regions.

which this antediluvian elephant was clothed : and it has been advanced, as a positive proof of the animal having lived where his remains were discovered; and, consequently, that he, and thousands of the same unwieldly race, the fossil bones of which are now found in such surprising quantities in the north, were all the natural inhabitants of these sterile regions, where no appearance of vegetation for their support is ever now produced. But notwithstanding this thick coat of hair and wool, we have not a shadow of ground for supposing the animal which it covered, ever to have been a native of the frozen regions; because, in their present

* I have seen the highly interesting portion of the skin and hair of this specimen, which was sent to Sir Joseph Banks, and is now in the valuable Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The skin is fully half an inch in thickness, in its dry and hard state, and must have originally been nearly an inch thick, and of prodigious strength. The hair is of three kinds, probably taken from different parts of the body. The longest is about a foot in length, of the nature of a thick bristle, and black in colour. The tufts of the second are of a dark chesnut colour, about four or five inches long, and of about the coarseness of the mane of a horse. The third kind of hair is of a dirty yellowish tint, and not more than about an inch long, closely covering the skin at the roots of the longer coat. Upon the whole, this hair presents us with the idea of a very rough and shaggy animal, of a dark brown, or chesnut colour, approaching to black, and which must, indeed, have exhibited a frightful appearance.

state, the soils of those climates do not produce the food necessary even for the smallest graminivorous animals; much less, then, for creatures of the size of the elephant, which are known to require the most luxuriant forest scenery for their habitation. It is admitted that no such scenery exists within many degrees of latitude of the Arctic Ocean; and it must, therefore, follow, that no such animals could find the necessary sustenance there, in the present state of the world. This difficulty is, however, easily overcome, by those who insist on the mammoth having been a native of the countries where we now find its remains. For they immediately change the position of the globe, and endeavour to show, that what are now the frozen poles, were made so by some unexplained convulsion, after having enjoyed all the luxuries of a tropical climate: and they further endeavour to prove, that this convulsion must have been QUITE SUDDEN, as the flesh and blood of this fossil elephant were still preserved entire. The supposed suddenness of this supposed convulsion, however, proves more than is demanded or desired by these theorists; for, if this elephant, together with the very great number of elephants and rhinoceri, whose remains are found in such quantities all over the frozen zone, were suddenly encased in ice, and thus, from that instant, preserved as entire as insects found in amber, why is it that

we do not find, in the descriptions of these icy masses, any mention made of the quantities of vegetable productions amongst which they must have lived, and which would equally have been preserved in the most perfect manner? We should, in such a case, have expected to have found, on the shores of the icy ocean, a complete antediluvian herbal, which would have settled all discussions respecting fossil vegetables found in other parts of the earth. We can in no way conceive a convulsion taking place, to produce, suddenly, such effects as exist at the poles, without freezing up, and preserving entire, the forests and jungles, as well as the wild beasts contained in them: nor is it in the least degree probable, that the elephants and rhinoceri would have been singled out for preservation, amongst all the numerous species of animals which inhabited the same forests as themselves, whilst almost every other creature was suffered to escape.

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"There is not," says Pallas," in all Asiatic Russia, from the Don, to the extremity of the promontory of Tchutchis, a stream or river, in the banks of which they do not find elephants, and other large animals, now strangers to that climate."* We no where

* Reliq. Diluv. p. 185.