Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/698

678 shells of small land-snails, mostly extinct in this region, though yet extant in high mountain-regions. So abundant are they as to give to this soil the popular name of "snail-shell soil." The preservation of animal and vegetable remains in the gravelly deposits of our lowlands is naturally rare, comparatively, they being, for the most part, soon destroyed in beds so loose and permeable by air and water. And yet in Germany, France, Belgium, England, Switzerland, and other parts of Europe, there are found, in this very formation, the bones and teeth of mammals, mostly of long-extinct species, the nearest congeners of which are now native either to Africa and Asia, or else to the colder parts of Northern Europe and America, and the higher Alps and Pyrenees. Bones of these same species, and hence of the same geological era, are found in numerous caves as well; some species, indeed, being almost wholly thus preserved. Among the better known of these caves we may cite those of the Suabian and Franconian Juras, and the Gailenreuther Cave, from which nearly every important cabinet of Europe has been enriched.

Prominent among the buried mammals of the drift are the mammoth (Elephas primogenius), the immense teeth and tusks of which are so often exposed by our river-currents, and during excavations for buildings, besides the many entire carcasses found in the ice and frozen soil of Siberia. In many of these latter cases, the skin, the hair proper, a reddish-brown, long, hairy wool, and a mane still longer, are kept in perfect preservation. The latest discovered of these was visited by the naturalist Schmidt, but the wild beasts had anticipated his comings and devoured most of the flesh. Middendorf estimates the number found in that region at several thousands. Their tusks—considerably curved, and eight to ten feet in length—are in quantities still sufficient to be the staple of a not inconsiderable trade in ivory. Brandt believes the mammoth to have been somewhat larger than the East Indian elephant of to-day, with tusks of much greater curvature.

Next in size to the mammoth was a rhinoceros, characterized by two horns and an osseous nasal septum (Rhinoceros tichorhinus). Its teeth are often met with, and, some fifteen years ago, an almost entire and perfectly preserved carcass was found in the ice on the river Wilni in Siberia.

Equally abundant with the remains of these two are those of the cave-bear (Ursus spelœus), which was about the match in size of the polar bear. It is found in the drift of the open country, and in the caves of the same age.

The peat-beds of Ireland yield entire skeletons of the giant-elk