82 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



vation can exist only in bones that have been imbedded in frozen 

 mud or frozen gravel, since dense clay impermeable to water has 

 been equally effective in preserving the remains of the same extinct 

 species of animals in the milder climate of England. There are in 

 the Oxford Museum bones of elephant and rhinoceros from diluvial 

 clay, in Warwickshire and Norfolk, that are scarcely at all more 

 decomposed than those brought by Captain Beechey from Esch- 

 scholtz Bay, and are nearly of the same color 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 with 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 remains in Esch- 

 scholtz 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 Air. Collie that 

 a like odour was perceived at the base of another mud cliff in Shal- 

 low 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 exhaltations 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, how- 

 ever numerous may be the animal remains that are buried in the 

 interior of the cliff, 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 abund- 

 antly loaded with fossil bones, it is scarcely possible that these 

 should undergo such rapid decomposition as to transmit strong 

 exhalations to the surface through so dense a substance as satu- 

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

 such rapid decomposition has taken place. 



" With respect to the matrix of frozen mud, from which these 



