248 DISCUSSION OF THE DESICCATION QUESTION. 



Nares, thus express themselves on this point : " The identity of genera and 

 of some species of the flora of the pre-carboniferous limestone ' Ursa stage ' 

 with those of the rocks of Europe, lying immediately above the limestone, 

 point to the equable and identical climate prevailing over very large areas 

 of the earth's surface, and to the local and temporary character of the deep 

 sea conditions expressed by the formation of tlie mountain limestone, in the 

 midst of a long continental episode, marked by the first rich land flora, in 

 the earth's history, which can be traced both in the old world and the new, 

 from 47° to 74° and 76° north lat., and which was as fully developed beyond 

 the Arctic Circle, as in Central Europe : the leaves of the evergreen tree 

 LcpkJodcndra, and the large fronds of Cardloptens frondosa being as well grown 

 in the Arctic as those from the Vosges and the south of Iceland." * 



Rocks of the age of the Carboniferous limestone occur on the north coast 

 of Grinnell Land (near the parallel of 83°), forming cliffs more than 2,000 feet 

 in height. These rocks contain the remains of corals, cephalopods, and en- 

 crinites, in regard to which the geologists of the Nares expedition remark 

 as follows : " Unless the corals, which all belong to the Palaeozoic types of 

 the Rugosa and Tabulata corals, had marvellous powers of adaptation to differ- 

 ent climates, they prove a more equable climate in the world than exists at 

 the present time, and when tiiken with the fact that the plants of the ' Ursa 

 stage ' of the Arctic regions lived before the deposition of the mountain lime- 

 stone in that area, and doubtless in other areas, and reappeared in the coal 

 measures overlying those limestones in Europe and North America, the 

 supposition that an equable warm moist climate overspread a large surface 

 of the globe during the whole of the carboniferous era becomes something 

 stronger than even a working hypothesis." t 



Ileer, in his " Flora Fossilis Arctica," also shows that the Carboniferous forma- 

 tion was once extensively developed in high northern latitudes. He describes 

 fossil plants of that age from Bear Island and from Spitzbergen, and indicates 

 the same rocks as occurring on the Parry Islands and in Siberia. He remarks 

 that there was during the Carboniferous epoch a great extent of land near 

 the North Pole covered with the vegetation of that period. 



The explorations of Nordenskiold on the western coast of Greenland have 

 furnished a large number of fossil plants belonging to the Cretaceous epoch, 



• A Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea during 1875-6, in H. M. ships "Alert" and "Discovery," by 

 Capt. Sir n. S. Nares, R. N., K. C. B., F. K. S. London, 1878. Vol. II. p. 331. 

 t 1. c, p. 332. 



