154 
APPENDIX. 
same distinctions between diluvial and alluvial deposits that 
are found in the valleys of all our European rivers. To 
the alluvial belong not only the immense deltas just men¬ 
tioned as occurring from Prome downwards to the sea, but 
also a number of islands, that are continually forming and 
shifting at various places along the whole extent of the 
actual bed of the Irawadi, more particularly at Rabaky- 
oaktan, and also between the latitudes of 20° and 21° N. 
about half way from Prome to Ava, between the towns of 
Wetmasut and Sale, in the neighbourhood of the fossil 
bones ; to the diluvial deposits we may probably refer the 
sand and gravel beds containing the mineralized bones, 
which, as Mr. Crawfurd has observed, it is impossible to 
attribute to the waters of the Irawadi, because they occur 
in a district where the stream is pent up within steep 
banks which it never overflows, and within which it never 
rises above twenty feet, while the average elevation of the 
ossiferous sand and gravel beds is at least sixty feet above 
the highest floods of this river. He further observes, that 
whilst the bones and wood of these comparatively elevated 
plains are mineralized, and converted the one to iron and 
the other to flint, the remains of modern trees and modern 
animals that are stranded on the alluvial islands of the 
existing river, (particularly on an island near Rabakyoak- 
tan,) undergo no such change, but are seen daily falling to 
decay and crumbling to dust: and he also mentions, for 
the purpose of disproving its correctness, that it is a popu¬ 
lar notion among the natives, who have long observed the 
existence of this fossil wood, that it has been turned to 
stone by the waters of the Irawadi: such opinions are very 
natural on the shores of rivers and lakes where fresh pieces 
of fossil wood become continually exposed by the wearing 
away of the banks in which they were imbedded and re¬ 
ceived their mineral impregnation; the waters of Lough 
