Vol. 50.] IN CANADA AND ALASKA. 9 



pardons lived. Humus and soil cannot accumulate upon ice except 

 as a moraine, and there are no traces of moraines or of grout 

 surfacc-glaciation in Alaska and Siberia. Nor could either tho 

 flora or fauna of the Mammoth age havo survived conditions con- 

 sistent with the accumulation of these beds of ice almost immediately 

 below the surface, or consistent with their presence there. The 

 speaker considered that these beds are due to the filtration of water 

 in the summer down to the point where there is a stratum of frozen 

 soil, through which it cannot pass and where it consequently accu- 

 mulates, freezes, raises the ground, and in the next season grows 

 by the same process until a thick bed of ice has been formed. 

 The evidence goes to show that the present is the coldest period 

 known in recent geological times in Siberia and Alaska, and that the 

 period of the Mammoth and its companions was followed and not 

 preceded by an Arctic climate where its remains occur, 



Dr. Henry Woodward mentioned that in 1850 Capt. Kellett and 

 Lieut. Wood brought remains of Musk-Ox and Mammoth to the 

 British Museum from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska ; and in 1873 the 

 llcv. B.. McDonald (one of the Hudson's Bay Company's Chaplains) 

 from Fort McPherson, Mackenzie River, Arctic America, gave to the 

 National Collection, from tho Porcupine Hiver, remains of Mammoth, 

 Musk-Ox, Bison prisms, and Horse. The Mastodon has lately been 

 found in Kent County, Ontario, Canada. These instances prove the 

 former abundance of the land Mammalia in high latitudes in North 

 America. The most interesting point in Dr. Dawson's paper is the 

 mention by him of the remains of Mammoth on the Aleutian 

 Islands, proving that this was the old high road for this and other 

 mammals from Asia into North America in Pleistocene times. 



Prof. Hull observed that, with reference to the requirements of 

 the large animals referred to in Dr. Dawson's interesting paper, he 

 had seen it stated that one had been discovered in N.W. America 

 nearly entire, and in its stomach were about seven bushels of 

 vegetable matter. However that might be, it seemed clear that the 

 climate of the circumpolar regions had undergone a great change 

 since the Mammoth had become extinct ; in consequence of which 

 the vegetation had materially fallen off. He also desired to call 

 attention to the clear evidence which the Author's paper afforded of 

 the former wider extension of land in the Arctic regions during 

 the Mammoth period. 



