CHAP. II.] ORGANIC REMAINS IN ICE. 37 



But after reading the accounts given by Sir James Ross and Captain 

 Wilkes, of the transfer of erratics by ice, from one point to another 

 of the southern seas, these traveled boulders begin to be regarded 

 quite as vulgar phenomena, or matters of every-day occurrence. 



There still remain, however, among the wonders of the polar 

 regions, some geological monuments which appear sufficiently 

 anomalous when we seek to explain them by modern analogies. 

 I refer to the preservation in ice of the carcasses of extinct species 

 of quadrupeds in Siberia ; not only the rhinoceros originally dis 

 covered, with part of its flesh, by Pallas, and the mammoth 

 afterward met with on the Lena by Adams, but still more 

 recently the elephant dug up by Midderidorf, September, 1846, 

 which retained even the bulb of the eye in a perfect state, and 

 which is now to be seen in the museum at Moscow.^ 



In part of the unpublished evidence collected by Mr. Hayes, 

 are statements which may perhaps aid us in elucidating this ob 

 scure subject ; at all events they are not undeserving of notice, 

 were it only to prove that nature is still at work in the icy regions 

 enveloping a store of organic bodies in ice, which, after a series 

 of geographical and climatal changes, and the extermination of 

 some of the existing cetacea, might strike the investigator at some 

 remote period of the future as being fully as marvelous as any 

 monuments of the past hitherto discovered. The first extract, 

 which I make, with Mr. Hayes permission, is from the evidence 

 of Captain Benjamin Pendleton, of Stonington, who, from his 

 knowledge of the South Shetland fisheries, was chosen by the 

 American government to accompany the late exploring expedition to 

 the Antarctic seas. He had cruised in 1820 and 1822 for GOO 

 miles along the lofty ice cliffs bounding the great southern conti 

 nent. He says, that in 1821 , when he wished to bury a seaman 

 in one of the South Shetland islands, several parties of twelve 

 men each, were set to dig a grave in the blue sand and gravel ; 

 but after penetrating in nearly a hundred places through six or 

 eight inches of sand, they came down every where upon solid 

 blue ice. At last he determined to have a hole cut in the ice, 

 of which the island principally consisted, and the body of the man 

 * See &quot;Principles of Geology,&quot; by the Author, 7th ed. 1847, p. 83. 



