84 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



also brought the carcasses of reindeer, and have stranded them on 

 the shores where their horns were found. 



" The agency of the same currents to which I have referred the 

 drifting of the carcasses of reindeer into Eschscholtz Bay will also 

 equally explain the presence of recent bones of the musk-ox in this 

 bay on the same shoal with the bones of elephants that had fallen 

 from the cliff. I have already stated that the condition of the skull 

 and horns of a musk-ox, which were brought home with the fossil 

 bones, is so very recent, and differs so essentially from the condition 

 of all the bones of elephants from this place, that it is impossible it 

 can have been buried in the same matrix with them ; for, in such 

 case, all would have been nearly in the same state, either of preser- 

 vation or decay, 



" It is stated by Cuvier," that a similar doubt is attached to the 

 heads of musk-oxen described by Pallas and Ozeretzkovsky, as 

 found near the mouth of the Ob, and at the embouchure of the 

 Yana, and that there is yet no sufficient proof of the existence of 

 any fossil species of musk-ox that may be considered of the same 

 age with the fossil elephant, or which can be brought in evidence 

 as to the question of the climate of the polar regions when these 

 elephants were living. Of the very few remains of musk-oxen 

 which have yet been found, it does not appear that any have been 

 buried at a great depth. 



" There is nothing peculiar to Eschscholtz Bay in the occurrence 

 of bones of horses with those of elephants ; from the number of 

 localities in which their teeth and bones have been found together, 

 in diluvial deposits, it appears that more than one species of horse 

 was co-extensive with the fossil elephant in its occupation of the 

 ancient surface of the earth. Wild horses are at present almost un- 

 known, except in warm or temperate latitudes. 



" We may now consider how far the facts we have collected re- 

 specting the bones in Eschscholtz Bay are in accordance with simi- 

 lar occurrences, either in the adjoining regions to the north, or in 

 other still more distant parts of the earth, and in different latitudes. 



" It is stated by Pallas in the I7lh volume of the New Commen- 

 taries of the Academy of Petersburg, 1772, that throughout the 

 whole of northern Asia, from the Don to the extreme point nearest 

 America, there is scarce any great [607] river in whose banks they 

 do not find the bones of elephants and other large animals which 

 cannot now endure the climate of this district, and that all the fossil 



^ Ossemens Fossiles, second edition, Vol. IV, p .165. 



