GEOLOGY. 



BY CAPTAIN SIR JOHN ROSS, C.B., K.S.A., K.C.S., &c. 



GEOLOGICAL NOTICE RESPECTING THAT PART OF THE AMERICAN 

 LAND VISITED DURING OUR VOYAGE. 



I MAY commence with James's Island, of which Sir E. Parry examined the southern 

 and eastern coasts ; my observations which are peculiarly scanty for this part of our 

 voyage, are limited to the northern shore, to which the name of North Devon has been 

 given. I must at the same time say, that under my previous familiarity with the 

 neio-hbouring and opposed shore of America, I formed the conclusions here drawn, 

 more from a comparison of the physiognomy of the little known with that which had 

 been far better studied, than from observations which our very brief intimacy with this 

 coast afforded me no means of making. 



My acquaintance with the shore in question begins at Cape York, and extends to 

 Possession Bay. The whole of this line presented that succession of limestone, which 

 from its similarity, in every particular, of picturesque forms, positions, and mineral cha- 

 racters, I had determined, when on the American shore, and with ample opportunities 

 of examination, to be a " deposit " or " series," so resembling that which the geologists 

 of England term mountain limestone, that it must be discriminated by this name, 

 unless, as I do not yet know, the American philosophers have applied another term to 

 their great calcareous formations. 



Of the interior country on this shore, I must speak with more reserve; yet drawmg 

 such inferences as I here give, from the same source, namely, the exceeding similarity 



