Note AI — Front matter (continued 5)

The Czar, Peter, being curious in Natural History, issued orders in the year 1722, that wherever any bones of the mammoth should be found, search should be made after the remainder, and the whole of them sent to Petersburg, and which orders were made public in all the towns of Siberia. In consequence of this several persons applied to the Woywode of Jakutzk to be sent off to two different places, where they affirmed they had seen these bones; their demands were complied with, and many of them returned with heads and various bones, which were transmitted to Petersburg, and placed in the imperial cabinet; but it will be found upon examination that all the bones placed there, under the denomination of the Mammoth bones, are perfectly similar with the elephant’s. And as to their being found under the earth and in Siberia, it may fairly be presumed that in the great revolutions which have happened to the earth, a great number of elephants might be driven from their native climates; many have been destroyed by the inundations, and those who wandered so far into the North must necessarily have perished from the rigours of the climate. Voyage a Kamtschatka par M. Gmelin.