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COXE’S TRAVELS IN RUSSIA. 325
is ufed inftead of ivory, and the fea-otter, which is caught on the coaft of Kamtchatka,
and of the Aleiitian.and Fox Iflands. This animal is greatly prized for its rich and
valuable fur, and the fkin is difpofed of to the Chinefe at a high price *.
The colleétion of birds, infects, fifh, fhells, dried plants, all ranged in exact order,
and after the fy{tem of Linnzus, next attraéts the obfervation of the naturalift.
In the cabinet of natural hiftory, 1 was furprifed at the number and variety of foffil
bones, teeth, and horns, of the elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo, difcovered in dif-
ferent parts of this empire, but more particularly in the fouthern regions of Siberia,
where thefe animals where never known to exift.. According to the opinion of Peter,
who, though a great monarch, was certainly no great naturalift, the teeth found near
Voronetz were the remains of elephants belonging to the army of Alexander the
Great, who, according to fome hiftorians, crofled-the Don, and advanced as far as
Koftinka. The celebrated Bayer conjectures ¢, that the bones and teeth found in
Siberia belonged to the elephants common in that country, during the wars of the
Mongol monarchs with the Perfians and Indians; and this plaufible fuppofition is in
fome meafure. corroborated by the difcovery of the entire fkeleton of an elephant in
one of the Siberian tombs. But this opinion, as Pallas juftly obferves, is fufficiently
refuted by the confideration, that the elephants employed in all the armies of India
could never have,afforded the vaft quantities of teeth which have been already dif-
covered {.
The fame ingenious naturalift has given ample defcription of thefe foffil bones, and
endeavoured to account for their origin§. On examining thofe in the mufeum, he
was led, to conclude, that as thefe bones are equally difperfed in all the northern re-
gions of Europe, the climate probably was in the earlier ages fufficiently warm to be
the native countries of the elephant, rhinoceros, and other quadrupeds, now found
only in the fouth.. But when he vifited, during his travels, the {pots where the foflil
bodies were found, and could form a judgment from his own obfervations, and not
from ’the accounts of others, he candidly renounced his former hypothefis, and, in
conformity with the opinions of many modern philofophers, aflerted that they muft
have been brought by the waters, and that nothing but a fudden and general munda-
tion, fuch as the deluge, could have tran{ported them from their native countries to the
regions ofthe north. In proof of this aflertion he adds, the bones are generally found
feparate, as if {cattered by the waves, covered with a ftratum of mud, evidently form.
ed by the waters, and commonly intermixed with the remains of marine plants |,
inftances of which he himfelf obferved during his progrefs through Siberia, and which
fufficiently prove that thefe regions of Afia were once overwhelmed with the fea. _
The moft curious of thefe fpecimens is the head and foot of a rhinoceros, which
were dug up entire in a bank of the Vilui, a fmall river falling into the Lena, in lati-
* See Ruffian Difcoverics. + Le Brnyn’s Travels, vol. i. p. 63.
+ Nov. Com. XTIT. p,.440.
§ Nov. Com. de Offibus Sibiriz foffilibus. He fays, that in no country more foffil bones have been
difcovered than in Siberia ; and that elephants’ teeth have been dug up in {uch plenty, as to make a con-
fiderable article of trade. : .
|| ‘Pallas, in a recent publication, has defcribed feveral foflil bones lately dug up in the government of
Cafan, fome whereof were fent to Peterfburgh in 1779, and depofited in the mufeum of the Academy.
The moft remarkable of thefe bones which he enumerates, are the following : An elephant’s tooth, Lo
{pans 3} inches long, and 153 inches in circumference ; ditto, 5 fect 3 inches in length, and the fame in
circumference ; feveral bones of elephants of confiderable fize ; a damaged horn of a rhinoceros, 2 feet 4
inches long ; a jaw of a rhinoceros, 3 {pans and 13 inches long, containing two black tecth, &c. Bericht
von Gebeinen grofler auflaendifcher Thiere. Pallas’s Nordifche Beytrage, vol. 1, p. 173.
VOL. Vk 5N tude
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