liACILUARIAN BKDS. 29 



12,000 feet high. Knowing as we do that Infusoria, Diatom- 

 acese, and other organic constituents, enter into the formation 

 of the pumice and ashes of other volcanoes, and are still rec- 

 ognizable in these minerals, it is perhaps not unreasonable to 

 conjecture, that the subterraneous and subaqueous forces which 

 keep Mount Erebus in activity, may open a direct communi- 

 cation between the diatoniaceous deposit and its volcanic fires. 



"VI. The diatoniaceous deposit flanks the whole length 

 of Victoria Barrier, a glacier of ice 400 miles long, whose 

 seaboard edge floats in the ocean, whilst its landward is 

 extended in one continuous sweep from the crater of Mount 

 Erebus, and other mountains of Victoria Land, to the sea. 

 The progressive motion of such a glacier, and accumulations 

 of snow on its surface, must result in its interference with 

 the deposit in question, which, if ever raised above the surface 

 of the ocean, would present a striped bed of rock which had 

 been subjected to the most violent disturbances." 



In 1850 Captain Penny collected in Assistance Bay, in 

 Kinstone Bay, and in Melville Bay (which lies between 73° 

 45' and 76° 40' N.), specimens of the residuum left by melted 

 ice and the sea bottom in these localities. These were sent by 

 Dr. Dickie, of Aberdeen, to Ehrenberg, who examined them 

 and reported upon them in the Berlin Akadaniie Monatsbc7-ichte 

 for 1853. There were figured in it siliceous loricae of Bacil- 

 laria and also spiculse of sponges. And also some of what he 

 called Polycistinse, or Radiolaria, as we should call them now, 

 but no Foramenifera apparently occur only in certain strata 

 or regions of the sea bottom. 



In the March, 1854, number of the Americcni Journal of 

 Science, page 176, Prof. Bailey gave "The Examination of 

 Some Deep Sea Soundings from the Atlantic Ocean," in 

 which he detected this microscopic feature of the soundings 

 and says they were in continuation of some detailed in the 

 Smithsonian Contrilndions to Knowledge, \''ol. II, A?t. j, 

 Therein he made known the soundings along the coast from 

 the depth of 51 fathoms southeast of Montauk Point in 90 



