APPENDIX. 
145 
short a period as has elapsed since the date of this publi¬ 
cation, the zealous investigations of a single individual 
should have gone so far as those of Mr. Crawfurd have 
done, to supply an answer to the questions then pro¬ 
posed. 
The evidence which Mr. Crawfurd has imported, is de¬ 
rived from no less than seven large chests full of fossil 
wood and fossil bones, and of specimens of the strata that 
are found along the course of the Irawadi, from its mouth 
near Rangoon up to Ava, being a distance of nearly five 
hundred miles. 
The larger portion of the fossil wood is beautifully sili- 
cified, and displays most delicately the structure and fibres 
of the living plants : in other specimens of it this structure 
is more obscure, though sufficient to show that the trees 
in which it exists were dicotyledonous. This obscurity 
arises from the fact of most of these dicotyledonous plants 
being impregnated with carbonate of lime, whilst all the 
monocotyledonous stems are silicified, as are also a few of 
the dicotyledonous: in these latter also the vegetable struc¬ 
ture is more distinct than in the calcareous fossils, and in 
some of them it much resembles that of the tamarind wood. 
These plants were found most abundantly in the same 
region with the fossil bones, but occur also along nearly 
the whole course of the Irawadi from Ava to Prome. 
They were principally collected from a tract of country 
extending over a square of more than twenty miles on the 
east bank of the Irawadi, near the town of Wetmasut, 
about half-way between Ava and Prome, between lat. 20° 
and 21° N. The occurrence of bones was most abundant 
in a small space near the centre of this district, occupying 
about one-third of the above-named area, the surface of 
which is composed chiefly of barren sand hills mixed with 
gravel; beneath these are strata containing shells and lig- 
vol. it. k 
