(i2, Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



brought down by drifting ice in the spring." Floating ice from the 

 Buckland River also undoubtedly explains the presence on this 

 beach of blocks of sandstone and basalt noticed by Beechey/° 



The writer can attest to the transporting of bones considerable 

 distances by rivers. In the summer of 1904 he ascended the Old 

 Crow River, a tributary of the Porcupine, by its meandering course 

 about one hundred and seventy miles, and along the upper one 

 hundred miles of this distance found strong evidence in the shape 

 of scattered bones of the former existence of mammoth, bison, and 

 horse. On the bars also were accumulations of the broken and 

 comminuted fragments of their bones. These remains were with- 

 out exception all found below the high-water level of the flood 

 stages of the river and were without question brought down from 

 some primary source or sources of deposition, by the great trans- 

 porting agent in those regions, floating ice. Yet the formation of 

 the river banks along which the remains occur is a continuous 

 deposit of Pleistocene lacustrine silts rising about 150 feet above 

 the river level and frequently exposing, where the river is cutting 

 laterally into them, terraced escarpments of ice. The ice deposits 

 do not form a continuous sheet over the whole lacustrine area, nor 

 do they rise as solid walls from the water level. They occur in the 

 undulations of the surface on top of the silts as beds 10 to 30 feet 

 thick, as already explained, and are elevated 100 feet or more above 

 the river. In no case were individual beds of ice exposed for more 

 than one mile and in most cases the exposures are not so extensive 

 as this. In no case was anything seen above the ice but peat and 

 humus. This is explained, however, by the fact that the deposits 

 as exposed by the sections examined comprise the central area of 

 what has been an extensive Pleistocene lake. Only near the former 

 lake shores are to be expected the conditions of abruptly rising 

 land slopes to afford detritus and alluvium for deposits on top of 

 the ice such as exist at the Beresowka locality and at Elephant 

 Point. It also appears from these cases that the surfaces of the 

 drained lake bottoms where extensive were too treacherous 

 or uninviting for the mammals of that time to wander out over 

 them, so experience thus far points towards the immediate shores 

 of the Pleistocene lakes as the places to search for mammal re- 

 mains in their primary position. 



In reviewing the facts as they appear the writer is satisfied that 

 the statements to the effect that the ice-beds associated with the 



^ See Appendix. 



