598 
APPENDIX. 
NOTES EXTRACTED FROM THE JOURNAL OF ME. COLLIE. 
“ The attention of the world has been called to the remarkable cliff in which 
fossil bones were found by Dr. Eschscholtz in August, 181G. On ray first visit to it 
in the month of July, 1826, time did not permit me to do more than take a view of 
the most eastern part, and examine the nature of the icy fronting which it pre- 
sented. At that time I saw no traces of fossils ; this cliff faces to the N., and 
extends in nearly a right line, with few interruptions, for two miles and a half, 
and IS in general about ninety feet high. It is composed of clay and very fine 
quartzy and micaceous sand, assuming a grayish appearance when dry. The land 
behind rises gradually to an additional height of one hundred feet, and is covered 
with a black boggy soil nourishing a brown and gray lichen, moss, several species 
of ericae, graminiai and other herbaceous plants, and is intersected with a few val- 
leys containing small streams, and having their more protected declivities adorned 
with shrubs of willow and dwarf betula (hetula incana), 
A continual waste of the cliff is produced at the upper part by its falling 
down in considerable lumps to the bottom, wh6re the debris remains for a longer 
or shorter time, and covers the front to a greater or less height, in some places, 
almost to the very top. Large masses are sometimes seen rent off and standing 
out from the body of the cliff ready to have their last slight hold washed away by 
the next shower, or by a little more thawing and separation of the frozen earth 
that serves them for attachment. The lumps of soil that fall are still covered with 
the herbaceous and shrubby verdure that grew upon them. The perpendicular 
front of the cliff of frozen mud and sand is every summer gradually decreasing by 
t e meltin^ of the ice between its particles into water, which trickles down and 
carries with it loose particles of earth. In some portions of the cliff the earthy 
surface is protected with ice, pai’tly the effect of snow driven into the hollows and 
fissures, and partly from the congelation of water, which may have collected in 
chinks or cavities : these masses of ice dissolve in summer, and the water running 
from them carries with it any earth that lies in its way, and mixes itself with, and 
moves forward, the mass of debris below. By this gradual thawing and falling of 
the cliff, the black boggy soil at the surface becomes undermined, and assumes 
the projecting and overhanging appearance which is so remarkable. At the base 
of the greater part of the cliff the debris is washed by the sea at full tide, and 
being gradually carried away by the retiring waters, is spread out into an extensive 
shoal along the coast. It was in this shoal, where it is left dry by the ebbing tide, 
to the distance of fifty or a hundred yards from the cliff, that the greater number 
of the fossil bones and teeth were discovered, many of them so concealed as only 
