384 Professor Buckland on the Bones of Mastodon, ^c.from Ava. 



hood and other places higher up the Irawadi, are several specimens of soft and 

 greenish sandstones resembling* those of our plastic clay formation. From all 

 these^ it appears highly probable, that some of the most important component 

 members of our tertiary strata occur along a great part of the course of the 

 Irawadi, between Ava and Prome, near which latter place the alluvial delta 

 begins, which extends from thence, by Rangoon, to the gulf of Martaban. 



Throughout this district also we seem justified, by the notes of Mr. Craw- 

 furd, in establishing the existence of the same distinctions between diluvial 

 and alluvial deposits that are found in the valleys of all our European rivers. 

 To the alluvial belong not only the immense deltas just mentioned as 

 occurring from Prome downwards to the sea, but also a number of islands, 

 that are continually forming and shifting at various places along the whole 

 extent of the actual bed of the Irawadi, more particularly at Rabakyooktan, 

 and also between the latitudes of 20° and 2 1° N. about half-way from Prome 

 to Ava, between the towns of Wetmasut and Sale, in the neighbourhood of the 

 fossil bones ; to the diluvial deposits we may probably refer the sand and gravel 

 beds containing the mineralized bones, which, as Mr. Crawfurd has observed, 

 it is impossible to attribute to the waters of the Irawadi, because they occur in 

 a district where the stream is pent up within steep banks which it never over- 

 flows, and within which it never rises above twenty feet, while the average ele- 

 vation of the ossiferous sand and gravel beds is at least sixty feet above the 

 highest floodsof this river. He further observes, that whilst the bones and wood 

 of these comparatively elevated plains are mineralized, and converted the one 

 to iron and the other to flint, the remains of modern trees and modern animals 

 that are stranded on the alluvial islands of the existing river, (particularly on 

 an island near Rabakyooktan,) undergo no such change, but are seen daily 

 falling to decay and crumbling to dust : and he also mentions, for the purpose 

 of disproving its correctness, that it is a popular notion among the natives, 

 who have long observed the existence of this fossil wood, that it has been 

 turned to stone by the waters of the Irawadi : such opinions are very natural 

 on the shores of rivers and lakes where fresh pieces of fossil wood become 

 continually exposed by the wearing away of the banks in which they were 

 imbedded and received their mineral impregnation ; the waters of Lough 

 Neagh in the county of Antrim are in the same way believed by the Irish 

 peasants to possess the property of converting wood to stone*. 



The facts in such cases are, that a succession of fresh pieces of silicified 



* The idea is probably alluded to in the cry, which is said to have been at one time common 

 in Dublin: " Lough Neagh! buy my hones, 



Once were wood, and now are stones." 



