378 CARBONIFEROUS FOSSILS. 



In the collections now brought home from the very furthest 

 point visited, viz. the northern edge of Albert Land and the 

 islands off that coast, lat. 77 to 77 15 N., we can recognize 

 several characteristic carboniferous fossils, and indeed some 

 of our own English species large Producti, corals, etc. ; and 

 with these, as we might expect, are forms not yet described. 



A short notice of similar fossils from Melville Island, lat. 

 76, was offered lately to the Royal Dublin Society by the 

 Rev. Professor Haughton. The collection was made at the 

 same time with those now described, and presented to the 

 society by Captain M'Clintock a name well known as that 

 of a zealous Arctic explorer. Among the fossils the Professor 

 recognized one, if not two, identical with those of the carbo- 

 niferous rocks of Britain. 



But although these familiar fossils had never, before the late 

 Expedition, been found in so high a latitude, we were in some 

 degree prepared to meet with the marine equivalents of the 

 carboniferous formation in one part or another of the great 

 Arctic basin, both from the circumstance of fossil shells of 

 that date having been found near the Slave Lake and along 

 the Mackenzie, by Richardson,* and more especially from 

 their occurrence in the northern part of the eastern hemi- 

 sphere, even so far north as 74 30', off the North Cape. In 

 the Transactions of the Royal Academy of Philosophy at Ber- 

 lin, the Baron Von Buch described, in 1846, fossils of this 

 age brought home by Keilhau from the rocky islet called 

 Bear Island (B'aren Insel) in that latitude. f 



This islet, which lies to the south of Spitzbergen, is barely a 

 mile in circumference, and is chiefly composed of limestone 

 resting on coal shales, which, according to Von Buch, contain 

 ferns of the genus Pecopteris. 



The overlying limestone, which forms steep cliffs, was found 

 to contain the large Productus giganteus, together with P. 



* ' Narrative of a Journey,' etc. See also Murchison's ' Siluria,' 

 p. 427. 



f Von Buch, in Physikalische Abliandl. der Konigl. Akad. drr 

 Wissenschaften (Berlin), vol. for 1846, p. 65, plate. 



