Page:Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Volume 1 (2nd edition).djvu/249

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—The supposed discovery of fossil bones imbedded in the ice of Escholtz Bay, in West Georgia, had excited much interest among naturalists, both on account of the antiquity which it gave to ice formations, and the light which such a discovery was calculated to throw on the state of the climate of the arctic regions at the time when they were thickly inhabited by genera of the largest quadrupeds. But (as before observed) the visit of the Blossom to these shores has demonstrated that the supposed ice formation is only a casing occurring on the face of a cliff, of from twenty to eighty feet in height, and rising inland to a rounded range of hills, between four and five hundred feet above the sea. The geognostic structure of these cliffs is a bluish-coloured mud or clay, corresponding in character to our