Ice-beds on Eschscholtz Bay 83 



remains are said to be derived, it appears, from specimens of it ad- 

 hering to the bones, that it consists of micaceous sand and quartzose 

 sand, intermixed with fine blue clay. In a hollow of one of the 

 tusks I found a quantity of this compound, and some fragments of 

 mica slate. All these ingredients may have been derived from the 

 detritus of primitive micaceous slates, such as constitute a large 

 part of the fundamental rocks of the neighborhood of Eschscholtz 

 Bay. 



" Pebbles of porphyry also are said to occur in the clifif, and also 

 on the beach below it, mixed, in the latter case, with pebbles of 

 basalt and sandstone, and a few large blocks of basalt. No rock 

 was noticed in this district from which these rolled stones could 

 have been derived ; some of those upon the beach may possibly have 

 been drifted thither on floating icebergs. The tranquil state and 

 retired position of the bay render it improbable that these pebbles 

 have been brought to their present place by the influence of any 

 existing submarine currents. 



" It is important to clear from confusion two facts mentioned by 

 Captain Beechey, viz., the occurrence of remains of the reindeer and 

 of the musk-ox along with bones of the elephant in Eschscholtz Bay. 

 Had the bones of either of these arctic animals been found une- 

 quivocally mixed with the bones of elephants in any undisturbed 

 part of the high clift", it would have followed that the reindeer and 

 the musk-ox must have been co-eval with the fossil elephant ; and this 

 fact would have been nearly decisive of the question as to the cli- 

 mate of this region at the time when it was inhabited by these three 

 species of animals. But as all the fossil remains collected in Esch- 

 scholtz Bay, with the exception of a very few bones and the tusk 

 of an elephant that la}' high up in the under cliff, were collected on 

 the beach between high and low-water mark, nothing is more prob- 

 able than that the bones of modern animals should become mixed 

 with those of fossils after they had fallen upon the beach in the 

 recesses of a quiet bay. 



" Kotzebue (vol. i, p. 218) says he saw many horns of reindeer 

 lying on the shore in Eschscholtz Ba}', and conjectures that the 

 Americans, who frequent these [p. 606] coasts occasionally in the 

 hunting season, may have brought with them the reindeer from 

 which these horns had been derived. This hypothesis may explain 

 the presence of such horns in a spot which no wild reindeer are 

 known to frequent at present; but as Kotzebue [p. 219] mentions 

 also the abundance of drift-wood upon the shores of this bay, it is 

 probable that the same currents which brought the wood may have 



