346 APPENDIX. 



phaiit and rhinoceros, from diluvial clay in Warwickshire and 

 Norfolk, that are scarcely at all more decomposed than those 

 brought by Captain Beechey from Eschscholtz Bay, and are 

 nearly of the same colour and consistence with them. I have 

 also a fragment of the tusk of an elephant from the coast of 

 Yorkshire, near Bridlington, of which great part had been 

 made into boxes by a turner of ivory before the remainder 

 came into my possession ; and on comparing the state of the 

 residuary portion of this tusk from Yorkshire widi that of the 

 scoop made of a fossil tusk by the Esquimaux in Eschscholtz 

 Bay, I find the difference scarcely appreciable. 



It is mentioned, both by the Russian and English officers, 

 that a strong odour like that of burnt bones is emitted from 

 the mud of the cliffs in which they discovered these animal re- 

 mains in Eschscholtz Bay : other observers have stated the 

 same thing of the mud cliffs in Siberia, near the mouth of the 

 Lena, which contain similar organic remains. But it is also 

 stated by Mr. Collie that a like odour was perceived at the 

 base of another mud cliff in Shallow Inlet, near Eschscholtz 

 Bay, where there were no bones ; and as in this latter case we 

 must attribute it to some cause unconnected with the bones, 

 and probably to gaseous exhalations from the mud itself, we 

 may, I think, draw the same inference as to the origin of the 

 odour in all the other cases also ; thus in Eschscholtz Bay, 

 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 inadequate 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 cliflF, 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 un- 

 dergo such rapid decomposition as to transmit strong exhala- 

 tions to the surface through so dense a substance as saturated 

 clay; in fact, their high degree of preservation shows that no 

 such rapid decomposition has taken place. 



