NO. 14.] INTRODUCTION. 



to the great quantity of deposit continually being formed, and on the other 

 hand to the small number of organisms that can exist at the surface of a 

 sea completely covered with ice for the greater part of the year, and which 

 only for a short time in the summer presents a small, open area in which 

 the microscopic organisms, as far as we can judge, are even then not found 

 in nearly such large numbers as in the warmer seas. In the Fram Expedition 

 deposits, only the latter of these two circumstances is of any importance, 

 and yet the result is almost the same. The deposits before us contain ex- 

 ceedingly few remains of organic origin; even in the deepest places, farthest 

 from land, their total amount scarcely ever exceeds 5% of the total deposit, 

 and in most places it is very considerably less. 



Yet a third, very striking peculiarity of these deposits is the great uni- 

 formity of their mineralogical composition. So far as can be judged from 

 the bottom-samples, they originate exclusively from quartziferous locks, either 

 from granites, gneisses, and other similar rocks, or from the sediments ori- 

 ginating from them, such as sand and clay. There is here a complete ab- 

 sence of any volcanic region, such as for instance, in the North Atlantic, 

 contributes such great mineralogical variety to the bottom-samples; and older 

 basic rocks, such as gabbros, diorites. etc., seem, at any rate, to occupy a 

 very subordinate place. The consequence of this again, is, that in the whole 

 of the region here treated, it is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to 

 make out the distribution in detail, a circumstance which, more than any 

 other, has produced the difficulty experienced in examining these deposits. 



It will be apparent from the foregoing remarks that several important 

 circumstances conspire to give a particularly uniform character to the 

 bottom-samples of the Fram Expedition. Since there are neither stony 

 ingredients, as is mostly the case elsewhere in the polar regions, nor great 

 quantities of organisms such as are found in the temperate and warm seas, 

 nor yet any great variation in the mineralogical composition, it might easily 

 be imagined that there can only be comparatively slight differences between 

 the various samples. A closer examination will show, however, that a number 

 of properties can nevertheless be brought to light, which sufficiently charac- 

 terise the various localities in their relation to one another. It is here my 

 intention in the first place to give as complete a description as I possibly can 



