FOSSIL REMAINS. 341 



ice, and that it is the broken edge of this icy stratum which 

 becomes exposed in the margin of the cliff during the process 

 of slow and gradual destruction which it is continually under- 

 going. 



This opinion, however, is I believe peculiar to Lieutenant 

 Belcher. The experiment made by Mr. Collie, in boring ho- 

 rizontally into the cliff through a vertical face of ice, until he 

 penetrated the frozen mud behind it, shows, that in this case 

 the ice was merely a superficial facing of frozen water, conso- 

 lidated as it descended the front of the cliff; and his further 

 experiments in digging vertically downwards, in two places, 

 through the peat into frozen mud, and finding no traces of 

 any intermediate bed of ice, appear unfavourable to any hy- 

 pothesis as to the formation of a stratum of pure ice between 

 the superficial peat and subjacent mud. 



It has just been slated that Captain Beechey and Mr. 

 Collie propose three different solutions to explain the origin 

 of these hanging masses of ice near the upper margin of the 

 vertical cliffs : 1st, That they may have been formed from 

 snow drifted into hollows of the cliffs, and subsequently con- 

 verted into ice ; 2dly, From water consolidated into ice within 

 fissures and cavities, caused by the subsidence and falling for- 

 wards of the frozen mud; 3dly, From water trickling down 

 the external surface of the cliff, and freezing as it descended. 

 To these the theory of Lieutenant Belcher would add a fourth 

 process, by which a horizontal bed of ice is formed between a 

 superficial bed of peat and the subjacent mud. These hang- 

 ing masses of ice, whatever may be their origin, appear to have 

 been so abundant at the time of the Russian expedition to this 

 coast, as to have made Kotzebue and Eschscholtz imagine the 

 entire cliff behind them to be an iceberg ; an opinion which all 

 the English officers agree in considering to be erroneous, since 

 the view and descriptions of the cliff on the south shore of 

 Escholtz Bay, given at p. 219 of the English translation of 

 Kotzebue's Voyage, do not correspond with the state of this 

 coast when it was subsequently visited by the crew of the 

 Blossom. 



The following are Captain Kotzebue's observations respect- 



