The discovery of Diamonds in Russia, far from the tropical zone, has
excited much interest among geologists. In the detritus on the banks
of the Adolfskoi, no fewer than forty diamonds have been found in the
gold alluvium, only twenty feet above the stratum in which the remains
of mammoths and rhinoceroses are found. Hence Humboldt has concluded
that the formation of gold-veins, and consequently of diamonds, is
comparatively of recent date, and scarcely anterior to the destruction
of the mammoths. Sir Roderick Murchison and M. Verneuil have been led
to the same result by different arguments.[32]