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Show THE MAMMOTH IN NORTHERN ALASKA. These remains of the mammoth are found on the banks of all the rivers of Siberia, even those farthest to the eastward. Lyell, in his geology, gives an account of the discovery in 1772, by Pallas, of the entire carcass of a rhinoceros imbedded in the sand on the Vilmi, a branch of the Lena, scarcely more than a hundred miles from the city of Yakutsk. The flesh adhered to the bones, though decaying, and the skin was covered with hair and wool. Pallas supposed from the wool and hair that the animal might once have occupied the cold regions of Central Asia. The veins still contained red blood, and half-chewed pine leaves were found in the cavities of his teeth. The bones of the mammoth, according to Cuvior, have been found at several places on the American continent, mixed with the bones of the mastodon, a huge animal with long, straight tusks, a specimen skull of which may be seen in Prof. Ward's collection. The Russian Captain, Kotzebuo, found them on the northern coast of Alaska, where they were so common that the sailors used them for fires. The naturalist accompanying this expedition brought specimens of the tusks to Europe. Captain Beechey, an English navigator who visited the same region in 1820, stopping at San Francisco on the way, also found many of the remains along the Alaskan coast. They had been deposited in mud or sand, then frozen in, and having, in process of time, been gradually thawed out, had fallen from the solid bergs of ice and mud, and were lying on the shore, level with the tide. Bones of modern animals were associated with them. All of the remains of the mammoth along the American, as well as the Siberian coast, appear to have been frozen in masses of thin mud or sand, and not of pure ice. Those along the rivers of Siberia have been usually found in beds of sand, and not in the marshes. San Francisco Chronicle. |