of an existing phase of the distribution of animal life, considered as the last of a long series of similar phases which have successively resulted from changes in the disposition of land and water, and from other controlling agencies, throughout all time. A reconstruction of the areas respectively occupied by the sea and the land at different geological periods will be possible, or at least greatly facilitated, when a complete system of similar groupings, illustrative of each successive period, has been compiled.
It is obvious that any great cosmical change, affecting to a wide extent any of the regions, might determine a destruction of specific existence; and this on a large scale, in comparison with the change which is always progressing in a smaller degree in the different and isolated divisions.
The brief remarks which I have made on this subject are intended to suggest, rather than to demonstrate – which could only be done by a lengthy series of examples – the causes influencing specific existence and its in many cases extreme frailty of tenure. And I shall now conclude by citing from the works of Lyell and Wallace a short list of notable species, now extinct, whose remains have been collected from late Tertiary, and Post Tertiary deposits – that is to say, at a time subsequent to the appearance of man. From other authors I have extracted an enumeration of species which have become locally or entirely extinct within the historic period.
These instances will, I think, be sufficient to show that, as similar destructive causes must have been in action during pre-historic times, it is probable that, besides those remarkable animals of which remains have been discovered, many others which then existed may have perished without leaving any trace of their existence. There is, consequently, a possibility that some at least of the so-called myths respecting extraordinary creatures, hitherto considered fabulous, may merely be distorted accounts —traditions– of species as yet unrecognised by Science, which have actually existed, and that not remotely, as man’s congener.
The Mammoth. – Among other remarkable forms whose remains have been discovered in those later deposits, in which geologists are generally agreed that remains of man or traces of his handicraft have also been recognised, there is one which stands out prominently both for its magnitude and extensive range in time and space. Although the animal itself is now entirely extinct, delineations by the hand of Palæolithic man have been preserved, and even frozen carcases, with the flesh uncorrupted and fit for food, have been occasionally discovered.
Fig. 9. – The Mammoth. (After Jukes.)
This is the mammoth, the Elephas primigenius of Blumenbach, a gigantic elephant nearly a third taller than the largest modern species, and twice its weight. Its body was protected from the severity of the semi-arctic conditions under which it flourished by a dense covering of reddish wool, and long black hair, and its head was armed or ornamented with tusks exceeding twelve feet in length, and curiously curved into three parts of a circle. Its ivory has long been, and still is, a valuable article of commerce, more especially in North-eastern Asia, and in Eschscholtz Bay in North America, near Behring’s straits, where entire skeletons are occasionally discovered, and where even the nature of its food has been ascertained from the undigested contents of its stomach.
There is a well-known case recorded of a specimen found (1799), frozen and encased in ice, at the mouth of the Lena. It was sixteen feet long, and the flesh was so well preserved that the Yakuts used it as food for their dogs. But similar instances occurred previously, for we find the illustrious savant and Emperor Kang Hi [A.D. 1662 to 1723] penning the following note42 upon what could only have been this species: —
“The cold is extreme, and nearly continuous on the coasts of the northern sea beyond Tai-Tong-Kiang. It is on this coast that the animal called Fen Chou is found, the form of which resembles that of a rat, but which equals an elephant in size. It lives in obscure caverns, and flies from the light. There is obtained from it an ivory as white as that of the elephant, but easier to work, and which will not split. Its flesh is very cold and excellent for refreshing the blood. The ancient work Chin-y-king speaks of this animal in these terms: ‘There is in the depths of the north a rat which weighs as much as a thousand pounds; its flesh is very good for those who are heated.’ The Tsée-Chou calls it Tai-Chou and speaks of another species which is not so large. It says that this is as big as a buffalo, buries itself like a mole, flies the light, and remains nearly always under ground; it is said that it would die if it saw the light of the sun or even that of the moon.”
Fig. 10. – Tooth of the Mammoth. (After Figuier.)
It seems probable that discoveries of mammoth tusks formed in part the basis for the story which Pliny tells in reference to fossil ivory. He says43: – “These animals [elephants] are well aware that the only spoil that we are anxious to procure of them is the part which forms their weapon of defence, by Juba called their horns, but by Herodotus, a much older writer, as well as by general usage, and more appropriately, their teeth. Hence it is that, when these tusks have fallen off, either from accident or old age, they bury them in the earth.”
Nordenskjöld44 states that the savages with whom he came in contact frequently offered to him very fine mammoth tusks, and tools made of mammoth ivory. He computes that since the conquest of Siberia, useful tusks from more than twenty thousand animals have been collected.
Mr. Boyd Dawkins,45 in a very exhaustive memoir on this animal, quotes an interesting notice of its fossil ivory having been brought for sale to Khiva. He derives46 this account from an Arabian traveller, Abou-el-Cassim, who lived in the middle of the tenth century.
Figuier47 says: “New Siberia and the Isle of Lachon are for the most part only an agglomeration of sand, of ice, and of elephants’ teeth. At every tempest the sea casts ashore new quantities of mammoth’s tusks, and the inhabitants of New Siberia carry on a profitable commerce in this fossil ivory. Every year during the summer innumerable fishermen’s barks direct their course to this isle of bones, and during winter immense caravans take the same route, all the convoys drawn by dogs, returning charged with the tusks of the mammoth, weighing each from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. The fossil ivory thus withdrawn from the frozen north is imported into China and Europe.”
In addition to its elimination by the thawing of the frozen grounds of the north, remains of the mammoth are procured from bogs, alluvial deposits, and from the destruction of submarine beds.48 They are also found in cave deposits, associated with the remains of other mammals, and with flint implements. This creature appears to have been an object of the chase with Palæolithic man.
Mr. Dawkins, reviewing all the discoveries, considers that its range, at various periods, extended over the whole of Northern Europe, and as far south as Spain; over Northern Asia, and North America down to the Isthmus of Darien. Dr. Falconer believes it to have had an elastic constitution, which enabled it to adapt itself to great change of climate.
Murchison, De Verneuil, and Keyserling believed that this species, as well as the woolly rhinoceros, belonged to the Tertiary fauna of Northern Asia, though not appearing until the Quaternary period in Europe.
Mr. Dawkins shows it to have been pre-glacial, glacial, and post-glacial in Britain and in Europe, and, from its relation to the intermediate species Elephas armeniacus, accepts it as the ancestor of the existing Indian elephant. Its disappearance was rapid, but not in the opinion of most geologists cataclysmic, as suggested by Mr. Howorth.
Another
The notice is taken from
According to Woodward, over two thousand grinders were dredged up by the fishermen of Happisburgh in the space of thirteen years; and other localities in and about England are also noted. – Dana’s
