4384 Notices of New Books. 



bases of the other cliffs. A mammoth tusk, having been noticed pro- 

 truding above the surface of this hill, was traced downwards by dig- 

 ging to the depth of eight feet; and the skull with a quantity of hair 

 and wool were found lying on a thin bed of gravel, beneath which 

 was solid transparent ice. Enveloping the bones there was a bed of 

 still clay, several feet in thickness, and mixed with them a small quan- 

 tity of sticks and vegetable matter. The superficial soil was loose 

 and dry. A strong, pungent, unpleasant odour, like that of a newly 

 opened grave in one of the crowded burial-places of London, was felt 

 on digging out the bones, and the same kind of smell, in a less degree, 

 was perceptible in various other places where the cliffs had fallen. 

 From the same pit out of which the mammoth's skull was dug the 

 bones of some smaller animals (a scapula, tibia, &c.) were taken, and 

 were duly labelled at the time, but in the course of their transfer from 

 one public department to another, after reaching London, the labels 

 have been lost, together with the specimens of the buried wood, gravel, 

 and other matters found associated with the bones. Dr. Goodridge 

 says that this eminence was the last examined, the approach of night 

 having prevented the party from exploring another hill lying between 

 it and Eschscholtz Bluff: that hill, however, was covered with luxu- 

 riant vegetation, and no icy cliffs showed themselves. 



" ' On Choris Peninsula,' says the same gentleman, ' frozen soil was 

 found at the depth of four feet at the end of September, after an unu- 

 sually warm summer ; and a cask full of flour deposited by Captain 

 Beechey in 1826, on Chamisso Island, was perfectly sound and fit for 

 food when disinterred in 1848. It was disengaged with much difficulty 

 from the frozen subsoil, and even the iron hoops of the cask were not 

 rusted.' Dr. Goodridge appends to his paper some remarks on the 

 annual waste of the ice-cliffs, and says that the bay is gradually filling 

 up with the clay and soil which are precipitated into the sea on the 

 melting of the ice on which they had reposed." 



1 The Annals and Magazine of Natural History? No. 78, dated 

 June, 1854 ; price 2s. 6d. London : Taylor & Francis, Red 

 Lion Court, Fleet Street. 



The contents of this number are as follows : — 

 1 On some new Genera and Species of Fossil Fishes.' By Sir 

 Philip Egerton, Bart., F.R.S., &c. 



