4-16 Mr. E. W. Brayley, Jun. on a Fossil Vertebra. 



panied. It would be, indeed, the natural result of the de- 

 struction of animals by a mighty inundation, attended by a 

 sudden change of temperature from warmth to intense cold, 

 and the immediate burial of their remains in the detritus 

 swept together by that inundation. Had the last change of 

 temperature undergone by the polar regions been slow, had 

 it been a gradual transition, of course occupying considerable 

 time, from their former high to their present very low tem- 

 perature, the volatilizable substances of the animal remains 

 in Eschscholtz Bay and at the mouth of the Lena, would 

 have been dissipated by putrefaction, long before the freezing 

 of the diluvium and its contents. 



The facts of the preservation of the carcasses of the mam- 

 moth and rhinoceros, prove the region in which they were found 

 to have been intensely cold at the time immediately succeeding 

 their death ; but the odour now diffused by the organic re- 

 mains in the diluvium of Eschscholtz Bay and of the mouth 

 of the Lena, affords collateral evidence to the same effect; 

 and it is, indeed, the corresponding fact with respect to these 

 remains, which we must suppose to have suffered in a greater 

 degree than the carcasses by the violence of the inundation. 

 "The carcass of a single elephant preserved in ice is," indeed, 

 66 decisive," as Dr. Buckland observes; " of the existence of 

 continual and intense cold ever since the period at which it 

 perished ;" and that the last change from heat to cold was 

 sudden, " is shown by the preservation of the carcass in ice ;" 

 but the induction is strengthened by our finding that evidence 

 to the same effect is afforded by animal remains inhumed at 

 the same epoch, but the state of which more nearly resembles 

 that of the contemporaneous fossils in the temperate zone, and 

 the parallelism of whose actual condition with that of the car- 

 casses is not immediately obvious*. 



In Dr. Buckland' s description of the most perfect specimens 

 of animal remains from Eschscholtz Bay, selected by him to 

 be engraved in illustration of his memoir, and stated to be 

 deposited in the British Museum, occurs a notice of a " Cer- 

 vical vertebra of an unknown animal," on which the following 



remarks 



* It is proper, in the investigation of subjects of the magnitude and 

 complexity of that now before us, to notice every fact which can have any 

 relation to them, whatever may be the influence of such facts upon our 

 theoretical speculations. On this account I make the following remark. 



Dr. Buckland observes (Narrative, Appendix, p. 610), that too much stress 

 has been laid on the circumstance of the mammoth in Siberia being covered 

 with hair ; and cites several examples from among the existing animals of 

 warm latitudes, to show, that no conclusive argument in proof that the Si- 

 berian elephant was the inhabitant of a cold climate can be drawn from 

 that fact. But the most important fact I would submit, is not that certain 



animals 



