998 The American Naturalist. [December, 
found to be distinctly greater than that of those from the sur- 
face, and this increase was exactly proportional to the larger 
quantity of lime present in the former,” and upon this fact we 
might found a belief that bones disappeared through solution. 
At considerable depths pressure would greatly reinforce chem- 
ical action, and as carbonic anhydride is liquified under a 
pressure of something over 38 atmospheres, in the deeper 
basins of the ocean this reagent may exist as aliquid. Ina 
French experiment, water, taken from a great depth of ocean, 
was under so high a tension from the enclosed gas, that upon 
release it spurted in a jet from the containing vessel. 
The remains of terrestrial vertebrates represent most gener- 
ally the submergence and death of the living animals them- 
selves, and Lyell has well described the way. He says (Prin- 
ciples, (Vol. II, p. 542), “river inundations recur in most cli- 
mates at very irregular intervals and expend their fury on 
those rich alluvial plains, where herds of herbivorous quadru- 
peds congregate together. These animals are often surprised, 
and, being unable to stem the current, are hurried along until 
they are drowned, when they sink at first immediately to the 
bottom. Here their bodies are drifted along, together with 
sediment, into lakes or seas, and may then be covered by a 
mass of mud, sand and pebbles thrown down upon them. 
“ Where the body is so buried in drift sand, or mud accumu- 
lated upon it, as never to rise again, the skeleton may be pre- 
served entire; but if it comes again to the surface while in the 
process of putrefaction, the bones commonly fall piecemeal 
from the floating carcass, and may in that case be scattered at 
random over the bottom of the lake, estuary, or sea, so thata 
jaw may afterwards be found in one place, a rib in another, & 
humerus in a third—all included, perhaps, in a matrix of fine 
materials where there may be evidence of very slight trans- 
porting power in the current, or even of none, but simply of 
some chemical precipitate.” 
Entire skeletons of animals or their bones scattered. over 
declivities or plains are not so likely to be gathered. together 
and deposited in some spot, because, as we have seen, they be- 
come subject to decay and dissipation., and because it would 
