594 
APPENDIX. 
observations and experiments made, on which Captain Beechey has founded his 
opinion, in which his officers. Lieutenant Belcher and Mr. Collie, entirely coin- 
cide with him, that the cliffs containing bones, which have been described by Kot- 
zebue and Eschscholtz as icebergs covered with moss and grass, are not composed 
of pure ice, but are merely one of the ordinary deposits of mud and gravel, that 
occur on many parts of the shores of the Polar Sea, being identical in age and 
character with diluvial deposits of the same kind which are known to be dispersed 
over the whole of Europe, and over a large part of Northern Asia and North 
America ; and presenting no other peculiarities in the frozen regions of the 
North, than that which results from the present temperature of these regions, 
causing the water which percolates this mud and gravel to be congealed into ice. 
The question of fact, whether the cliffs containing these bones of elephants, 
and other land quadrupeds, are composed of “ masses of the purest ice, a hundred 
feet high, and covered on their surface with vegetation,” as stated in the voyage 
of Lieutenant Kotzebue, (p. 219, English translation), or are simply composed, 
as Captain Beechey thinks them to be, of ordinary diluvium, having its interstices 
filled up with frozen water, is important, as it affects materially the consideration 
of the further question, as to what was the state of the climate of the arctic 
regions at the time when they were thickly inhabited by genera of the largest 
quadrupeds, such as at present exist only in our warmest latitudes ; this being a 
point of much interest and curiosity, in relation to the history of the physical 
revolutions that have affected our planet, and on which there still exists a difference 
of opinion among those individuals who have paid the greatest attention to the 
subject. 
Before I proceed to Mr. Collie’s observations on the spot in which they 
were found, I shall extract from his journal a list of the total number of animal 
remains collected during the short time he was with Captain Beechey in Eschscholtz 
Bay, and add my own list and description of the most perfect of these specimens, 
which I have selected to be engraved. 
LIST, SHOWING THE TOTAL NUMBER OF ANIMAL REMAINS COLLECTED IN 
ESCHSCHOLTZ BAY, TAKEN FROM THE JOURNAL OF MR. COLLIE. 
ELEPHANT. 
1 Lower jaw, nearly complete. 
7 Molar teeth. 
9 Tusks. 1 ive of them large, and weighing from one hundred to one hundred and sixty 
pounds each. Four small; one of these was found in the debris of the cliff half way up; the 
circumference of the largest tusk at its root is twenty inches, and at three feet above the root 
