These extraordinary accounts might be considered doubtful, had they not been abundantly confirmed by others, of which the authenticity is fully established. The first of these is the disinterment of a rhinoceros in 1771, near Vilhoui, having its flesh, skin and hair as in a living state. A circumstantial account of this event is recorded by Pallas; and the head and legs of the animal are still preserved at St. Petersburgh. The second was the discovery of a mammoth on the banks of the Alaseia, a river which flows into the Frozen Ocean beyond the Indigirska. The account is given in the voyage of Sarytschew. It had been dislodged by a flood, and the carcass was almost entire, and was covered with a skin, to which, in some places, long hair was still attached. The third was that of the mammoth brought to St. Petersburgh by Mr. Adams, and found in a state of preservation perfectly marvellous. The fact was first recorded in October, 1807, in the 30th number of the ' Journal du Nord,' published at St. Petersburgh, which, after being copied into various periodicals, was republished, nearly as follows, in the fifth volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of St. Petersburgh.
In 1799 a Tungusian fisherman observed, in a bank on the shore of the Frozen Ocean, at the mouth of the river Lena, a shapeless mass, almost enveloped in ice, and he was quite unable to make out what it could be. The year following, a larger portion of this mass became visible, but the fisherman was still unable to ascertain its nature. — Towards the end of the following summer one of the tusks and an entire side of the animal were exposed. It was not, however, until the fifth year from its discovery, when the ice having melted sooner than usual, that the enormous animal became entirely detached from the bank or cliff in which it was first observed, and came thundering down on to a sand-bank below. In the month of March, 1804, the fisherman extracted the tusks, which were 9 feet 6 inches long, and together weighed 360 lbs., and sold them at Jakutsk for fifty rubles. Two years afterwards Mr. Adams visited the animal, and found it much mutilated. The Jakoutes residing in the neighbourhood had cut away the flesh to feed their dogs; wild beasts, especially white bears, foxes, &c, had also eaten a great quantity of it. Nevertheless, the skeleton was entire, with the exception of a fore leg; the other bones being still held together by ligaments and portions of skin. The head was covered with dried skin; one of the ears was entire, and furnished with a tuft of hairs: the pupil of the eye was still to be distinguished; the brain was in the skull, but somewhat dried; the lower lip had been gnawed by animals, the upper one was entirely gone,
