N.) Under Which
Pallas Found The Frozen Rhinoceros In Siberia, Is Very
Interesting.
Although it is a fallacy, as I have endeavoured to
show in a former chapter, to suppose that the
Larger quadrupeds
require a luxuriant vegetation for their support, nevertheless
it is important to find in the South Shetland Islands
a frozen under-soil within 360 miles of the forest-clad islands
near Cape Horn, where, as far as the _bulk_ of vegetation is
concerned, any number of great quadrupeds might be supported.
The perfect preservation of the carcasses of the
Siberian elephants and rhinoceroses is certainly one of the
most wonderful facts in geology; but independently of the
imagined difficulty of supplying them with food from the
adjoining countries, the whole case is not, I think, so
perplexing as it has generally been considered. The plains of
Siberia, like those of the Pampas, appear to have been formed
under the sea, into which rivers brought down the bodies
of many animals; of the greater number of these, only the
skeletons have been preserved, but of others the perfect
carcass. Now, it is known that in the shallow sea on the Arctic
coast of America the bottom freezes, [19] and does not thaw in
spring so soon as the surface of the land, moreover at
greater depths, where the bottom of the sea does not freeze
the mud a few feet beneath the top layer might remain even
in summer below 32 degs., as in the case on the land with the
soil at the depth of a few feet. At still greater depths, the
temperature of the mud and water would probably not be low
enough to preserve the flesh; and hence, carcasses drifted
beyond the shallow parts near an Arctic coast, would have
only their skeletons preserved: now in the extreme northern
parts of Siberia bones are infinitely numerous, so that even
islets are said to be almost composed of them; [20] and those
islets lie no less than ten degrees of latitude north of the
place where Pallas found the frozen rhinoceros. On the other
hand, a carcass washed by a flood into a shallow part of the
Arctic Sea, would be preserved for an indefinite period, if it
were soon afterwards covered with mud sufficiently thick to
prevent the heat of the summer-water penetrating to it; and
if, when the sea-bottom was upraised into land, the covering
was sufficiently thick to prevent the heat of the summer air
and sun thawing and corrupting it.
Recapitulation. - I will recapitulate the principal facts with
regard to the climate, ice-action, and organic productions of
the southern hemisphere, transposing the places in imagination
to Europe, with which we are so much better acquainted.
Then, near Lisbon, the commonest sea-shells, namely, three
species of Oliva, a Voluta, and a Terebra, would have a
tropical character. In the southern provinces of France,
magnificent forests, intwined by arborescent grasses and with
the trees loaded with parasitical plants, would hide the face
of the land.
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