the great floods had subsided, it has been supposed that they were brought into Siberia by the mountain streams of India, where elephants still exist in large numbers. But, unfortunately for the credit of this opinion, the bones are found not only in the basins of those rivers that descend from the mountains of Chinese Tartary, but equally along the banks of the Don, the Volga, and the Jaïk, which flow from the north. "There is not," says M. Pallas, a traveller who has bestowed the greatest research upon this interesting subject-"there is not, in all Asiatic Russia, from the Don or the Tanaïs to the extremity of the promontory of Tchutchis, a single stream, a single river, above all of those which flow through the plains, on the banks or in the beds of which there are not found some bones of elephants, or of other animals equally strangers to the climate." It is this prodigious abundance of elephant remains in Asiatic Russia which at once shuts out the possibility that they belonged to animals attached to the expeditions of mankind. We have traced the march of the Mongol conquerors *; and we are confident that these princes, whatever power and magnificence we choose to ascribe to them, could never have brought together so many of these animals as would be necessary to furnish the bones found within the space of a very few miles, much less all those that have been scattered throughout this immense region †. It must be remembered,

* See chap. ix.

A writer, who has collected with great diligence, but with little system, a number of facts relating to the employment of elephants by man, with a view to prove that all the remains can be traced to their marches in Roman, African, or Asiatic armies, or to their destruction in amphitheatres, has the following passage on the elephant bones of Siberia: "One of the most considerable historical convulsions, which may, very reasonably, be supposed

also, that in Russian Asia, as well as in Europe, these remains are very commonly found in conjunction with the bones of other wild animals ;-that the bones of elephants are dispersed over the surface, very few entire skeletons remaining, as it were, in a sepulchre of sand ;-and that they are often discovered lying amongst beds of marine fossils.

But another remarkable fact is connected with the discovery of the remains of elephants and other quadrupeds in Siberia, which has given rise to the most interesting speculations as to the former temperature of that region, and the nature of the catastrophe which caused this extensive animal destruction. In some places the bones of elephants have been found with pieces of flesh still attached to them. M. Pallas has given a circumstantial relation of the disinterment of an entire rhinoceros, whose flesh, skin, and hair were still remaining. This remarkable circumstance took place at Vilhoui, in 1771. An elephant, almost entire, whose skin was partially covered with long hair, was subsequently found on the borders of the Alaseia, a river which flows into the Icy Sea, beyond the Indigirska. But the most ex

to have supplied Siberia with a great number of elephants, is the expulsion of the Mongols from China, A.D. 1369. Not one syllable of the particulars of that great event has been met with. But when we contemplate the mighty establishments of the grand Khan's court, and of his numerous empresses and children, whose travelling carriages were drawn by elephants, a multitude of those beasts probably accompanied them when they were driven into their original country. As to numbers, this source alone might possibly account for all the fossil remains. In the terror, confusion, flight, and pursuit during this disastrous catastrophe, some elephants may have escaped from their guides, and have wandered in Siberia, till accident or age destroyed them: it has been shewn that they bear cold which kills men and horses."Ranking's Wars and Sports.

traordinary discovery of this nature, which has probably ever been made, was that of the Lena elephant, found in 1799. It appears, from the narrative of M. Adams (an associate of the Academy of St. Petersburgh), which was originally published in the year 1805, in the Journal du Nord, that a Tongoose fisherman, of the name of Schumachoff, was accustomed, after the fisheries of the Lena were over, to search the banks of the river, where it falls into the Icy Sea, for the purpose of finding the common article of Siberian traffic, the horns of the Mammoth. In 1799, he one day perceived, in the midst of the fragments of ice, a shapeless mass, differing considerably in appearance from any object which he had previously noticed. The following year he observed that this body had become more disengaged from the ice; and towards the end of the succeeding summer, when he again reconnoitred it, he distinctly saw the flank of an elephant, and an entire tusk: but it was five years from his first observation before the fisherman possessed himself of the fruits of his discovery. He was partly deterred from approaching the elephant, by the superstition of his family, and partly by the difficulty of reaching it through the floating ice. At length, the icy fragments between the shore and the mammoth having melted away, this enormous mass was driven upon the coast upon a bank of sand. The fisherman immediately possessed himself of the tusks, which he sold for fifty rubles; and, unconscious of the value which science would attach to such a discovery, he left the remainder of the body to be devoured by the white bears and the wolves, and to be cut away by the natives as food for their dogs.

In the seventh year after it was first observed, M. Adams arrived at the spot. The skeleton was

then entire, with the exception of a fore leg; the greater part being kept together by the ligaments and a portion of the skin. One of the ears was fur

nished with a tuft of hair, the pupil of the eye was still discernible, and the brain was found in the cranium. The neck was covered with a long mane, and the skin of the body with black hair mixed with a reddish sort of wool: so considerable was the quantity of this hair and wool, that more than thirty pounds weight was recovered from the humid soil, into which it had been trodden by the animals which had been engaged in devouring the flesh. The head, without the tusks, which were nine feet long, weighed more than four hundred pounds. M. Adams was enabled to repurchase the identical tusks which had been sold by the fisherman; and the whole remains were deposited in the Academy at Petersburgh.

Upon the fossil elephants of Siberia, and upon this elephant in particular, Mr. Lyell has the following remarks:-"That the greater part of the elephants lived in Siberia after it had become subject to intense cold, is confirmed, among other reasons, by the state of the ivory, which has been so largely exported in commerce. Its perfect preservation indicates, that from the period when the individuals died, their remains were either buried in a frozen soil, or at least were not exposed to decay in a warm atmosphere. The same conclusions may be deduced from the clothing of the mammoth, of which the entire carcass was discovered by M. Adams on the borders of the Frozen Ocean, near the mouth of the river Lena, inclosed in a mass of ice. The skin of that individual was covered with long hair and with thick wool, about an inch in length. Bishop Heber informs us, that along the lower range of the Himalaya mountains, in the north-eastern borders of the Delhi territory, between