310 Scandinavian Diluvium. 



Melville and Ingloolick islands during Captain Parry's ex- 

 pedition, render this discovery probable, without diminishing 

 the interest which would be attached to it. To prove by nu- 

 merous facts that madrepore reefs were formerly able to exist 

 w^ithin from 10° to 15° of the pole, that arborescent ferns could 

 live and propagate themselves in a region from which the sun is 

 absent during several months of the year, would be the com- 

 pletion, and in some measure, as it were, the keystone of one 

 of the most interesting classes of geological facts — of one of 

 those which prove in the most satisfactory manner that the sur- 

 face of our globe has undergone immense changes.* 



Certain deposits of wood, which, according to some obser- 

 vations, are found on the shores of Spitzbergen, would also 

 possess an interest, although not of so high an order ; perhaps 

 they might furnish the proof that the Gulf Stream, which so 

 often casts the productions of Mexico on the shores of the 

 British isles, of Norway, Iceland, and even of Siberia, casts 

 them also on those of Spitzbergen. As a motive to researches 

 in regard to this subject, I may menti(m the name of Wood- 

 hay., which forms one of the indentations of the northern coast 

 of Spitzbergen, between the 79th and 80th degrees of north la- 

 titude, in a country in which a few annual plants a foot high 

 find difficulty in growing. 



Perhaps also the Siirturhrand or lignite of Iceland will be 

 found in Spitzbergen. 



These two phenomena, and especially the first, have nothing 

 in common with the corals and the tropical plants, whose geo- 

 logical position would announce that they grew in the country 

 itself. 



14. Scandinavian Diluvium. — Among the geological pheno- 

 mena presented by the north of Europe, one of the greatest, 

 the most curious, and the most important for the general ques- 



* In the collection of rocks from Jameson's Land, in Greenland, pre- 

 sented to us by Captain Scoresby, the discoverer of that country, we found, 

 in a series of specimens from Neill's Cliffs, a pretty ample display of rocks 

 of the old coal-formation, or that which rests immediately on the mountain 

 limestone. Neill's CliiFs are situated in the southern extremity of Jame- 

 son's Land, in about 70" 30' north latitude. Vide " Scoresby's Journal of a 

 Voyage to the Northern Whale-Fishery.'* — Edit. 



