seed of a polygonaceous plant, and very minute portions of wood with
porous cells (or small fragments of coniferous wood), were still
recognizable. It was also remarkable, on a close investigation of the
head, that the blood-vessels discovered in the interior of the mass
appeared filled, even to the capillary vessels, with a brown mass
(coagulated blood), which in many places still showed the red color of
blood."[142]

After more than thirty years, the entire carcass of a mammoth (or
extinct species of elephant) was obtained in 1803, by Mr. Adams, much
farther to the north. It fell from a mass of ice, in which it had been
encased, on the banks of the Lena, in lat. 70 degrees; and so perfectly
had the soft parts of the carcass been preserved, that the flesh, as it
lay, was devoured by wolves and bears. This skeleton is still in the
museum of St. Petersburg, the head retaining its integument and many of
the ligaments entire. The skin of the animal was covered, first, with
black bristles, thicker than horse hair, from twelve to sixteen inches
in length; secondly, with hair of a reddish brown color, about four
inches long; and thirdly, with wool of the same color as the hair, about
an inch in length. Of the fur, upwards of thirty pounds' weight were
gathered from the wet sand-bank. The individual was nine feet high and
sixteen feet long, without reckoning the large curved tusks: a size
rarely surpassed by the largest living male elephants.[143]

It is evident, then, that the mammoth, instead of being naked, like the
living Indian and African elephants, was enveloped in a thick shaggy
covering of fur, probably as impenetrable to rain and cold as that of
the musk ox.[144] The species may have been fitted by nature to
withstand the vicissitudes of a northern climate; and it is certain
that, from the moment when the carcasses, both of the rhinoceros and
elephant, above described, were buried in Siberia, in latitudes 64
degrees and 70 degrees N., the soil must have remained frozen, and the
atmosphere nearly as cold as at this day.

The most recent discoveries made in 1843 by Mr. Middendorf, a
distinguished Russian naturalist, and which he communicated to me in
September, 1846, afford more precise information as to the climate of
the Siberian lowlands, at the period when the extinct quadrupeds were
entombed. One elephant was found on the Tas, between the Obi and
Yenesei, near the arctic circle, about lat. 66 degrees 30 minutes