Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Physical geography / by Mary Somerville. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![that glacial oceau rose partially, and after many Ticissitudes tlie Eiiropeau continent assnined nearly its present form. There is every reason to believe that the glacial sea extended also over great portions of the Arctic lands of Asia and America. Old forms of animal and vegetable life were destroyed by these alterations in the surface of the earth, and the consequent change of temperatiu'e; and when, in the progress of the Pliocene period, the mountain tops appeared as islands above the water, they were clothed with the flora and peopled by the animals they still retain; and new forms were added as the land rose and became dry and fitted to receive and maintain the races of animals noAV alive, all of which had possession of the earth for ages prior to the commonly received historical or human period. Some of the extinct animals had long resisted the great vicissitudes of the times; of these the species of Mcphant whose remains are found all over Europe, Asia, and America, but especially in the frozen soil of Siberia, alone outlived its associates, the last remnant of a former world. In two or three instances this animal has been discovered entire, entombed in frozen mud, Avith its hair and flesh so fresh that wolves and dogs fed upon it. The globe of the eye of one found by M. Middendorf at Tas, between the rivers Ob and Yenisei, was so perfect that it is now preserved in the museum at Moscow. It has been supposed that, as the Siberian rivers flow for hundreds of miles from tlie S. part of the country to the Arctic Ocean, these elephants might have been drowned by floods while browsing in the milder regions, and that their bodies were carried down by the rivers and embedded in mud, and frozen before they had time to decay. Mr. Darwin has suggested that if the climate of Siberia has at any time been similar to that of the high latitudes of South America, where the line of perpetual snow in the Andes, and its sudden flexure in Southern Chile, come close to a nearly tropical vege- tation, such a vegetation may have prevailed S. of the frozen regions in Siberia. On the other hand, although the living species of this animal are now inhabitants of the torrid zone, they may have been able to endure the cold of a Siberian winter; for Cuvier has shown that the fossil diflered as much from the living elephant as the horse does from the ass. ]Mi\ Darwin supposes that the supply of food in summer was probably sufli- cient, since the quantity requisite for the maintenance of the larger animals is by no means in proportion to their balk ; or these elephants may have migrated to a more genial climate in the colder months. the glacial sea. It submerged part of Russia to the depth of 1000 ft.— • Essay on the British Fauna and Flora,' by Profe.«sor E. Forbes, in the * Memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain,' vol. i.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21961086_0049.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
