GEOLOGY. 313 



stems of plants, some of which exhibit passages from a silicified condition to 

 that of lignite and of wood, and numerous fragments of which seem to be 

 referable to existing species of coniferas. Most of the specimens were buried 

 in frozen mud or silt, and these have preserved, during a long period, their 

 woody fiber in a natural condition. Attention was particularly directed to 

 the portion of a trunk of one of these fir-trees, three feet six inches in circum- 

 ference, which had been procured by Captain M'Clure from a ravine in Banks's 

 Land, where much of the wood is strewed about, in different states of preserv- 

 ation, at heights varying from 300 to 500- feet above the sea, together with 

 cones apparently belonging to an Abies, resembling A. alba (a plant living 

 still within the Arctic circle). One of Lieutenant Pirn's specimens of wood 

 from Prince Patrick's Island is of the same character, and much resembles 

 Pinus strobus, or the American pine, according to Professor Quekett, who 

 refers another specimen, brought from Hecla and Griper Bay, to the larch. 

 Having alluded to the fact of the remains (including entire skeletons) of 

 whales having been found by Sir E. Belcher to the north of "Wellington Chan- 

 nel, at considerable heights above the sea, the author inferred that the exist- 

 ence of the remains of these animals, with those of fir-trees of considerable 

 size, in latitudes ranging from 74 to 78 10', could be most easily explained 

 by supposing that the greater portion of this region was submerged, when the 

 remains of whales and the Cyprina were lodged on a former submarine sur- 

 face, and when quantities of wood were floated or carried by ice-floes (ac- 

 companied by much silt and detritus) from the mouths of the nearest great 

 rivers; a subsequent elevation of such sea-bottom having produced the 

 present relations. At the same time he admitted that a case which had been 

 brought to his notice by Sir E. Belcher, might induce some persons to believe 

 that the trees grew upon the spot where their remains are now found ; since 

 that officer examined a trunk in lat. 75 30' north and Ion. 92 15 ' west, 

 which he states to have been in a vertical position, with its roots extending 

 downward into a clayey and peaty soil with sand. Remarkable as this case 

 is, and leading, as it might, to the inference that a very different climate pre- 

 vailed here when such vegetation existed, the author prefers the simpler view 

 above mentioned to one which would necessarily involve the hypotheses of 

 1. A much warmer climate, at a time when these Arctic lands were high 

 above the sea. 2. A depression to the extent of several hundred feet, to 

 account for the distribution of Arctic marine animals over the surface; and 

 3dly, another elevation to bring about the present configuration. In short, 

 however willing to allow for great upheavals and depressions in quasi-modern 

 times, the author does not see how the coexistence of the remains of whales 

 and marine-shells with living specimens of trees on the same lands can be 

 satisfactorily accounted for, except by a former action of drift, similar to that 

 which covered Northern Europe and Xorth America with erratics and debris 

 the polar examples differing only from those of other countries by the 

 preservation of wood in its pristine condition through the excessive cold of 

 the Arctic region. 



14 



