Remains of the Mammoth (Elephas primigenius) have been found in great numbers in the British Isles. A list of localities (from Mr. Leith Adams's monograph on fossil elephants) is given in the Appendix, but even this might be extended. Mr. Samuel Woodward calculated that upward of two thousand grinders of elephants have been dredged up during a period of thirteen years upon the oyster-bed off Hasborough, on the Norfolk coast. But many of these doubtless belong to other species of older date, such as Elephas antiquus.
Dr. Bree, of Colchester, says that the sea-bottom off Dunkirk, whence he has made a collection, is so full of mammalian remains that the sailors speak of it as "the Burying-ground."
The remains of the Mammoth occur over a very large geographical area--fully half the globe.
By far the most important discovery of a frozen Mammoth is that of a young Russian engineer, Benkendorf by name, who was an eye-witness of its resurrection, though, most unfortunately, he was unable either to procure his specimen, as Mr. Adams did, or to make drawings of it. Being employed by the Russian Government in making a survey of the coast off the mouth of the Lena and Indigirka rivers, he was despatched up the latter river in 1846, in command of a small steam-cutter. The following is a translation of the account which he wrote to a friend in Germany.
An inhabitant of Northern regions during the Great Ice Age.]
"In 1846 there was unusually warm weather in the north of Siberia. Already in May unusual rains poured over the moors and bogs, storms shook the earth, and the streams carried not only ice to the sea, but also large tracts of land, thawed by the masses of warm water fed by the southern rains.... We steamed on the first favourable day up the Indigirka; but there were no thoughts of land; we saw around us only a sea of dirty brown water, and knew the river only by the rushing and roaring of the stream. The river rolled against us trees, moss, and large masses of peat, so that it was only with great trouble and danger that we could proceed. At the end of the second day, we were only about forty versts up the stream; some one had to stand with the sounding-rod in hand continually, and the boat received so many shocks that it shuddered to the keel. A wooden vessel would have been smashed. Around us we saw nothing but the flooded land for eight days. We met with the like hindrances until at last we reached the place where our Jakuti were to have met us. Further up was a place called Ujandina, whence the people were to have come to us; but they were not there, prevented evidently by the floods.