certain Organic Remains in the Diluvium of the Arctic Circle. 415 



freezing point to above 70, and the great alternation annually, 

 from summer to winter, to which these matters are exposed, 

 would further promote this successive decomposition, would 

 indeed be most favourable to it. So that, upon the whole, 

 the animal matter of the bones in this diluvium, or that of the 

 tissues by which they were once invested, having been pre- 

 served by the cold, the circumstances under which they have 

 existed since the production of that cold, have been such as 

 to be most favourable to its constant though slow decompo- 

 sition, and the necessary production of the peculiar odour 

 perceived in the localities in which the bones are found. 



Dr. Buckland, however, reasoning from the fact stated by 

 Mr. Collie, that the odour in question was perceived at the 

 base of another mud cliff, in Shallow Inlet, where there were 

 no bones, thinks that in this case we must attribute it to some 

 cause unconnected with the bones, and probably to gaseous 

 exhalations from the mud itself. And, on this ground, he 

 thinks that we may draw the same inference as to the origin 

 of the odour in all the other cases also ; " thus in Eschscholtz 

 Bay," he observes, " where nearly all the bones were collected 

 at the base of the cliff on the beach below high water, how 

 can the presence of two or three bones only, lying half-way 

 up the cliff, account for the odour which is emitted over a 

 distance of more than a mile along this shore ? How inade- 

 quate is a cause so partial to so general an effect ! since, 

 however numerous may be the animal remains that are 

 buried in the interior of the cliff, no exhalations from them 

 can escape through their impenetrable matrix of frozen mud ; 

 and even if that fallen portion of mud which constitutes 

 the under-cliff be ever so abundantly loaded with fossil bones, 

 it is scarcely possible that these should undergo such rapid 

 decomposition as to transmit strong exhalations to the surface 

 through so dense a substance as saturated clay ; in fact, their 

 high degree of preservation shows that no such rapid decom- 

 position has taken place." (Beechey's Narrat. Appen. p. 604-.) 



But the peculiar nature of the odour in question, its occur- 

 rence in two distant points where the same fossils are present 

 under the same circumstances, and its absence, so far as has yet 

 been recorded, in all other localities of the Arctic regions, for- 

 bid us, 1 think, to refer it to any other origin than the decompo- 

 sition of some part of the animal matter of those fossils. The 

 reasoning of Dr. Buckland, upon this point, does not appear to 

 me to be conclusive. In Eschscholtz Bay, the presence of two or 

 three bones only, lying half-way up the cliff, certainly will not 

 account for the diffusion of the odour for a mile along the 

 shore ; but a portion of this effect may reasonably be attributed 

 to bones in the situation of those which were actually collected 

 by Mr. Collie, " at the base of the cliff on the beach below 



high 



