could not have scattered them so far, nor dispersed them so equably. Besides, the inundation which buried them has not risen above the great chains of mountains, since the strata which it has deposited, and which cover the bones, are only found in plains of little elevation. It is not, therefore, seen how the carcases of elephants could have been transported into the north, across the mountains of _Thibet_, and the _Altaic_ and _Uralian_ chains. Further, these bones are not rolled; they retain their ridges and apophyses; they have not been worn by friction. Very frequently the epiphyses of those which had not yet attained their full growth, are still attached to them, although the slightest effort would suffice to detach them. The only alterations that are remarked, arise from the decomposition which they have undergone during their abode in the earth. Nor can it with more reason be represented that the entire carcases had been violently transported. In this case, the bones would indeed have remained entire; but they would also have remained together, and would not have been scattered. The shells, millepores, and other marine productions which are attached to some of these bones, prove besides that they had remained at least some time stripped and separated at the bottom of the fluid which covered them. The elephants’ bones had therefore already been in the places in which they are found, when the fluid covered them. They were scattered about in the same manner as in our own country the bones of horses and other animals that inhabit it may be, and as the dead bodies are spread in the fields. Every circumstance, therefore, renders it extremely probable, that the elephants which have furnished the fossil bones, dwelt and lived in the countries where their bones are at present found. They could only, therefore, have disappeared by a revolution, which had destroyed all the individuals then living, or by a change of climate, which prevented them from propagating. But whatever this cause may have been, it must have been sudden. The bones and ivory which are found in so perfect a state of preservation in the plains of Siberia, are only so preserved by the cold which congeals them there, or which, in general, arrests the action of the elements upon them. If this cold had come on by degrees and slowly, these bones, and still more the soft parts with which they are still sometimes invested, would have had time to decompose, like those which occur in warm and temperate countries. It would especially have been impossible that an entire carcase, like that discovered by Mr Adams, could have retained its flesh and skin without corruption, if it had not been immediately enveloped by the ice which preserved it. Thus, all the hypotheses of a gradual cooling of the earth, or of a slow variation, whether in the inclination or in the position of the axis of the globe, fall to be rejected.