FOSSIL REMAINS. 339 



The few specimens taken out of the cliff, or more properly 

 from the debris, on the front of it (for none, I believe, were 

 taken out of the very cliff), were in a better state of preserva- 

 tion than those which had been alternately covered and left 

 exposed by the flux and reflux of the tide, or imbedded in the 

 mud and clay of the shoal. 



A very strong odour, like that of heated bones, was exhaled 

 wherever the fossils abounded. Quantities of rolled stones, 

 mostly of a brownish sandstone, lay upon the shoal, left dry by 

 the receding sea. With these were also porphyritic pebbles. 



Parts of some of the tusks, where they had been imbedded 

 in the clay and sand, were coloured blue by phosphate of iron, 

 and many of the teeth were stained in the same manner. The 

 circular layers of the tusks in the more decayed specimens 

 were distinctly separated by a thin vein of fibrous gypsum. 



In those parts of the bay where there are no cliffs, the waves 

 are kept at a distance from the land by a gravelly beach, which 

 they have thrown up for a considerable extent round the en- 

 trance of the streams which come down the valleys. These 

 beaches have formed rounded flats containing marshes or lakes : 

 not unfrequently rather a luxuriant herbage covers their sur- 

 face. The land behind them rises by a gentle slope. Great 

 part of the shore of Kotzebue Sound is made up of a diluvial 

 formation, similar to that on the south shore of Eschscholtz 

 Bay. From Hut Peak to Hotham Inlet it exhibits many 

 chffs similar to those just described, and also others with an 

 uniform and steep slope, partly covered with verdure, and 

 partly exposing the dry sand and clay which compose them. 

 The most elevated cliffs form the projecting head-land of Cape 

 Blossom, and abound in ice, notwithstanding their southern 

 aspect, particularly at Mosquito station and Cape Blossom. 

 In their neighbourhood I observed the natives had recently 

 formed coarse ivory spoons from the external layer of a fossil 

 elephant's tusk. The ice here in the end of September show- 

 ed itself more abundantly than it did in the middle of the 

 same month on the cliffs of Escholtz Bay which have a 

 northern aspect." 



Mr. Collie then proceeds to explain still further his ideas of 



