rofimov's mammoth come the mammoth-_finds_ of
Middendorff and Schmidt. The former was made in 1843 on the bank of
the river Tajmur, under 75 deg. N.L.; the latter in 1866 or the
Gyda _tundra_, west of the mouth of the Yenisej in 70 deg. 13'
N.L. The soft parts of these _finds_ were not so well preserved as
those just mentioned. But the _finds_ at all events had a greater
importance for science, from the localities having been thoroughly
examined by competent scientific men. Middendorff arrived at the
result that the animal found by him had floated from more southerly
regions to the place where it was found. Schmidt on the other hand
found that the stratum which contained the mammoth rested on a bed
of marine clay, containing shells of high northern species of
crustacea which still live in the Polar Sea, and that it was covered
with strata of sand alternating with beds, from a quarter to half a
foot thick, of decayed remains of plants, which completely
correspond with the turf beds which are still formed in the lakes of
the _tundra_. Even the very beds of earth and clay in which the
bones, pieces of hide, and hair of the mammoth _mummy_ were
enclosed, contained pieces of larch, branches and leaves of the
dwarf birch (_Betulct nana_), and of two northern species of willow
(_Salie glauca_, and _herbacea_).[228] It appears from this that the
climate of Siberia at the time when these mammoth-carcases were
imbedded, was very nearly the same as the present, and as the stream
in whose neighbourhood the find was made is a comparatively
inconsiderable _tundra_ river, lying wholly to the north of the
limit of trees, there is no probability that the carcase drifted
with the spring ice from the wooded region of Siberia towards the
north. Schmidt, therefore, supposes that the Siberian elephant, if
it did not always live in the northernmost parts of Asia,
occasionally wandered thither, in the same way that the reindeer now
betakes itself to the coast of the Polar Sea. VON BRANDT, VON
SCHMALHAUSEN, and others, had besides already shown that the remains
of food which were found in the hollows of the teeth of the Wilui
rhinoceros consisted of portions of leaves and needles of species of
trees which still grow in Siberia.[229]

Soon after the mammoth found on the Gyda _tundra_ had been examined
by Schmidt, similar _finds_ were examined by GERHARD VON MAYDELL, at
three different places between the rivers Kolyma and Indigirka,
about a hun