296 



TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 



June, 1834. 



Mr. Lyell of the Siberian plains, with their innumerable fossil 

 bones, the relics of many successive generations, there can 

 be little doubt that the beds were accumulated either in a 

 shallow sea, or in an estuary. From the description given 

 in Beechey^s voyage of Eschscholtz Bay, the same remark is 

 applicable to the north-west coast of America : the formation 

 there appears identical with the common littoral deposits* 

 recently elevated, which I have seen on the shores of the 

 southern part of the same continent. It seems also well 

 established, that the Siberian remains are only exposed 

 where the rivers intersect the plain. With this fact, and 

 the proofs of recent elevation, the whole case appears to be 

 precisely similar to that of the Pampas : namely, that the 

 carcasses were formerly floated into the sea, and the remains 

 covered up in the deposits which were then accumulating. 

 These beds have since been elevated ; and as the rivers 

 excavate their channels the entombed skeletons are ex- 

 posed. 



Here then, is the difficulty : how were the carcasses pre- 

 served at the bottom of the sea ? I do not think it has been 

 sufficiently noticed, that the preservation of the animal with 

 its flesh was an occasional event, and not directly consequent 

 on its position far northward. Cuvierf refers to the voyage 

 of Billing as showing that the hones of the elephant, buffalo, 

 and rhinoceros, are nowhere so abundant as on the islands 

 between the mouths of the Lena and Indigirska. It is even 

 said that excepting some hills of rock, the whole is composed 

 of sand, ice, and bones. These islands lie to the northward 

 of the place where Adams found the mammoth with its flesh 

 preserved, and even ten degrees north of the Wiljui, where 

 the rhinoceros was discovered in a like condition. In the 

 case of the bones we may suppose that the carcasses were 



* See some remarks by Dr. Buckland on the similarity of this forma- 

 tion with the deposits so commonly found over a great part of Europe. 

 Appendix to Beechey 's Voyage, p. 609. 



f Ossemens Fossiles, vol. i., p. 151. 



