Wherever a sufficiency of herbivorous animals
to supply them with food can live, there they can live also;
and they have therefore no special bearing upon the question of
climate. After a review of the whole evidence, Professor Dawkins
concludes that the nearest approach at the present day to the
Post-Pliocene climate of Western Europe is to be found in the
climate of the great Siberian plains which stretch from the Altai
Mountains to the Frozen Sea. "Covered by impenetrable forests,
for the most part of Birch, Poplar, Larch, and Pines, and low
creeping dwarf Cedars, they present every gradation in climate
from the temperate to that in which the cold is too severe to admit
of the growth of trees, which decrease in size as the traveller
advances northwards, and are replaced by the grey mosses and
lichens that cover the low marshy 'tundras.' The maximum winter
cold, registered by Admiral Von Wrangel at Nishne Kolymsk, on
the banks of the Kolyma, is--65 deg. in January. 'Then breathing
becomes difficult; the Reindeer, that citizen of the Polar region,
withdraws to the deepest thicket of the forest, and stands there
motionless as if deprived of life;' and trees burst asunder with
the cold. Throughout this area roam Elks, Black Bears, Foxes,
Sables, and Wolves, that afford subsistence to the Jakutian and
Tungusian fur-hunters.
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