June, 1834. 



EDIBLE FUNGUS. 



^97 



drifted into a deeper sea, and there remaining at the 

 bottom, the flesh decomposed.* But in the second and 

 more extraordinary case, where putrefaction seems to have 

 been arrested, the body probably was soon covered up by 

 deposits which were then accumulating. It may be asked, 

 whether the mud a few feet deep, at the bottom of a shallow 

 sea which is annually frozen, has a temperature higher than 

 32° ? It must be remembered how intense a degree of cold 

 is required to freeze salt water ; and that the mud at some 

 depth below the surface, would have a low mean tempera- 

 ture, precisely in the same manner as the subsoil on the land 

 is frozen in countries which enjoy a short but hot summer. 

 If this be possible^t the entombment of these extinct quadru - 



* Under these circumstances of slow decomposition, the surrounding 

 deposits would probably be impregnated with much animal matter ; and 

 thus the peculiar odour perceived in the neighbourhood of the strata con- 

 taining fossil bones at Eschscholtz Bay, may be accounted for. See Ap- 

 pendix to Beechey's Voyage. 



t With respect to the possibility of even ice accumulating at the bot- 

 tom of the sea, I shall only refer to the following passage taken from the 

 English translation of the Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, by 

 Captain W. Graah, Danish Royal Navy. " Nor is this the only danger to 

 be apprehended : the ice off this blink, even to a considerable distance 

 from it, being said to shoot up from the bottom of the sea in such a 

 manner, and in such masses, as in many years to make it utterly impass- 

 able. How to account for the phenomenon to which I have just ad- 

 verted I know not, unless by supposing that the bottom of the sea itself is 

 hereabouts like the dry land covered with a thick crust of ice. But 

 whether this crust is formed upon the spot, or is the remains of icebergs 

 and the heavy drift-ice frozen to the bottom during severe winters, or a 

 portion of the land«ice, which loaded with stones and fragments of the 

 crumbling hill has protruded itself into the sea, is a problem impossible, 

 perhaps to solve." Again he says : " We passed it without any accident, 

 and without having observed any thing of that upheaving of the ice off it, 

 to which allusion has been made, though the fact of its occurrence cannot 

 be doubted, the very name of the place, Puisortok, being thence derived." 

 It seems fully established on excellent testimony (see Journ. of Geograph. 

 Soc, vol. v., p. 12, and vol. vi., p. 416 ; also a collection of notices in 

 Edinburgh Journal of Nat. and Geograph. Soc, vol. ii., p. 55), that fresh- 

 water rivers in Russia and Siberia, and even in England, often freeze at 



