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to throw light on the curious and perplexing question, as to wliat was the climate
of this portion of the world at the time when it was inhabited by animals now so
foreign to it as the elephant and rhinoceros, and as to the manner in which, not
only their teeth and tusks and dislocated portions of their skeletons, but, in some
remarkable instances, the entire carcasses of these beasts, with their flesh and
skin still perfect, became entombed in ice, or in frozen mud and gravel, over
such extensive and distant regions of the northern hemisphere.
The bones from Eschscholtz Bay, like most of those we find in diluvial deposits,
are no way mineralized: they are much altered in colour, being almost
black, and are to a certain degree decomposed and we.akened; yet they retain so
much animal matter, that not only a strong odour like tlnat of burnt horn is emitted
from them on the application of heated iron, hut a musty and slightly ammoniacal
smell is perceptible on gently rubbing their surface.
It must not, however, be inferred that this high state of preservation can
exist only in bones that have been imbedded in frozen mud or frozen gravel, since
dense clay impermeable to water has been equally effective in preserving the remains
of the same extinct species of animals in the milder climate of England.
There are in the Oxford Museum bones of elephant and rhinoceros from diluvial
clay, in 'Warwickshire and Norfolk, that are scarcely at all more decomposed than
those brought by Captain Beechey from Eschscholtz Bay, and are nearly of the
same colour and consistence with them. I have also a fragment of the tusk of an
elephant from the coast of Yorkshire, near Bridlington, of which great part had
been made into boxes by a turner of ivory before the remainder came into my
possession ; and on comparing the state of the residuary portion of this tusk from
Yorkshire with that of the scoop made of a fossil tusk by the Esquimaux in Eschscholtz
Bay, I find the difference scarcely appreciable.
It is mentioned, both by the Russian and English officers, that a strong odour
like that of burnt bones is emitted from the mud of the cliffs in which they
discovered these animal remains in Eschscholtz Bay : other observers have stated
the same thing of the mud cliffs in Siberia, near the mouth of the Lena, which contain
similar organic remains. But it is also stated by Mr. Collie that a like odour
was perceived at the base of another mud cliff in Shallow Inlet, near Eschscholtz
Bay, where there were no bones ; and as in this latter case we must attribute it to
some cause unconnected with the hones, and probably to gaseous exhalations from
the mud itself, we may, I think, draw the same inference as to the origin of the
odour in all the other cases also; thus in Eschscholtz Bay, where nearly all the
bones were collected at the base of the cliff on the beach below high water, how
can the presence of two or three bones only, lying half way up the cliff, account
for the odour which is emitted over a distance of more than a mile along this
shore ? How inadequate is a cause so partial to so general an effect! since, however
numerous may be the animal remains that are buried in the interior ofthe cliff, no
exhalations from them can escape through their impenetrable matrix of frozen
mud ; and even if that fallen portion of mud which constitutes the under-cliffbe ever
so abundantly loaded with fossil bones, it is scarcely possible that these should
undergo such rapid decomposition as to transmit strong exhalations to the surface
through so dense a substance as saturated clay; in fact, their high degree of preservation
shows that no such rapid decomposition has taken place.
With respect to the matrix of frozen mud, from which these remains are said
to be derived, it appears, from specimens of it adhering to the bones, that it
consists of micaceous sand and quartzose sand, intermixed with fine blue clay. In
the hollow of one of the tusks I found a quantity of this compound, and some
fragments of mica slate. All these ingredients may have been derived from the
detritus of primative micaceous slates, such as constitute a large part of the fundamental
rocks of the neighbourhood of Eschscholtz Bay.
Pebbles of porphyry also are said to occur in the cliff, and aiso on the beach
below it, mixed, in the latter case, with pebbles of basalt and sandstone, and a
few large blocks of basalt. No rock was noticed in this district from which
these rolled stones could have been derived; some of those upon the beach may
possibly have been drifted thither on floating icebergs. The tranquil state and
retired position of the bay render it improbable that these pebbles have been
brought to their present place by the influence of any existing submarine currents.
It is important to clear from confusion two facts mentioned hy Captain
Beechey, viz. the occurrence of remains of the rein-deer and of the musk-ox along
with hones of the elephant in Eschscholtz Bay. Had the bones of either of these
arctic animals been found unequivocally mixed with the bones of elephants in any
imdisturbcd part ofthe high cliff, it would have followed that the rein-deer .and
the musk-ox must liave been coeval with the fossil elephant; and this fact would
have been nearly decisive of the question as to the climate of this region at the
time when it was inhabited by these three species of animals. But as all the fossil
remains collected in Eschscholtz Bay, with the exception of a very few bones and
the tusk of an elephant that lay high up in the under cliff, were collected on the
beach between high and lower water mark, nothing is more probable than that the
bones of modern animals should become mixed with these fossils after they had
fallen upon the beach in the recesses of a quiet bay.
Kotzebue (vol. I. p. 218) says he saw many horns of rein-deer lying on the
shore in Eschscholtz Bay, and conjectures that the Americans, who frequent these