BONES ON HYMALAYA CHAIN AT 16,000 FEET. 223 
masses that fall with the avalanches from the regions of perpetual 
snow, and are therefore said by the natives to have fallen from the 
clouds, and to be the bones of genii. Those I have seen are the 
astragalus, head of femur, and portions of humerus of a small species 
of horse, and some bones of deer; their medullary cavities and cancelli 
are lined, or entirely filled with white crystalline carbonate of lime, 
beautifully transparent, and the bone itself is white, and very absorbent 
to the tongue; their matrix is a grey calcareous sand, adhering firmly 
to the bones, and interspersed with small concretions of carbonate of 
lime. There were also found with them the bones of bears*. 
The occurrence of these bones at such an enormous elevation in 
the regions of eternal snow, and consequently in a spot now unfre¬ 
quented by such animals as the horse and deer, can, I think, be ex¬ 
plained only by supposing them to be of antediluvian origin, and that 
the carcases of the animals were drifted to their present place, and 
lodged in sand, by the diluvial waters. 
This appears to me the most probable solution that can be sug¬ 
gested; and, should it prove the true one, will add a still more 
decisive fact to those of the granite blocks drifted from the heights of 
Mont Blanc to the Jura, and the bones of diluvial animals found by 
Humboldt on the elevated plains of South America, to show that 
« all the high hills and the mountains under the whole heavens 
were covered,” at the time when the last great physical change by 
an inundation of water took place, over the surface of the whole 
earth. 
* For further particulars, received from Captain Webb, respecting these bones, 
see the Quarterly Review, No. 57, p. 155. 
