Dr. Buckland has shown that for long ages many species of carnivorous
animals now extinct inhabited the caves of the British islands. In low
tracts of Yorkshire, where tranquil lacustrine (lake-like) deposits
have occurred, bones (even those of the lion) have been found so
perfectly unbroken and unworn, in fine gravel (as at Market Weighton),
that few persons would be disposed to deny that such feline and other
animals once roamed over the British isles, as well as other European
countries. Why, then, is it improbable that large elephants, with a
peculiarly thick integument, a close coating of wool, and much long
shaggy hair, should have been the occupants of wide tracts of Northern
Europe and Asia? This coating, Dr. Fleming has well remarked, was
probably as impenetrable to rain and cold as that of the monster ox of
the polar circle. Such is the opinion of Sir Roderick Murchison, who
thus accounts for the disappearance of the mammoths from Britain:
When we turn from the great Siberian continent, which, anterior
to its elevation, was the chief abode of the mammoths, and look
to the other parts of Europe, where their remains also occur, how
remarkable is it that we find the number of these creatures to be
justly proportionate to the magnitude of the ancient masses of land
which the labours of geologists have defined! Take the British
isles, for example, and let all their low, recently elevated
districts be submerged; let, in short, England be viewed as the
comparatively small island she was when the ancient estuary of the
Thames, including the plains of Hyde Park, Chelsea, Hounslow, and
Uxbridge, were under the water; when the Severn extended far into
the heart of the kingdom, and large eastern tracts of the island
were submerged,--and there will then remain but moderately-sized
feeding-grounds for the great quadrupeds whose bones are found in
the gravel of the adjacent rivers and estuaries.
This limited area of subsistence could necessarily only keep up a small
stock of such animals; and, just as we might expect, the remains of
British mammoths occur in very small numbers indeed, when compared with
those of the great charnel-houses of Siberia, into which their bones
had been carried down through countless ages from the largest mass of
surface which geological inquiries have yet shown to have been _dry
land_ during that epoch.
The remains of the mammoth, says Professor Owen, have been found in
all, or almost all, the counties of England. Off the coast of Norfolk
they are met with in vast abundance. The fishermen who go to catch
turbot between the mouth of the Thames and the Dutch coast constantly
get their nets entangled in the tusks of the mammoth. A collection
of tusks and other remains, obtained in this way, is to be seen at
Ramsgate. In North America, this gigantic extinct elephant must have
been very common; and a large portion of the ivory which supplies
the markets of Europe is derived from the vast mammoth graveyards of
Siberia.
The mammoth ranged at least as far north as 60°. There is no doubt
that, at the present day, many specimens of the musk-ox are annually
becoming imbedded in the mud and ice of the North-American rivers.
It is curious to observe, that the mammoth teeth which are met with
in caves generally belonged to young mammoths, who probably resorted
thither for shelter before increasing age and strength emboldened them
to wander far afield.