0?i (he Glaciers and Climate of Iceland. 285 



Wrangel and Kosmin are inclined to consider the drift- 

 wood which is thi'own on the Siberian coasts as being also of 

 American origin, a supposition which we would regard with 

 so much the more doubt, as their statements and observa- 

 tions are often contradictory.* According to the statements 

 of these travellers themselves, there exist on the banks of 

 the Lena, and from thence eastward, wide-spreading forests 

 of pines and firs, which certainly, according to their nature, 

 do not extend themselves into the most northerly regions ; 

 yet the sources of the Indigirka and Kolyma lie under the 

 62d parallel of latitude, in a climate admitting of the growth 

 of these trees. Besides, the distance from the mouth of the 

 Lena to that of the Indigirka is only about an eighth of the 

 distance from these parts to the western coast of Amei'ica, 

 where rivers bearing drift-wood discharge themselves into 

 the Pacific Ocean, The drift-wood, if it came from America, 

 must first pass the Aleutian Islands, then Behring's Strait, 

 and finally must float along several hundred miles of the Si- 

 berian coast, to reach the places where it is now found ; but 

 the supposition of its taking such a course as this appears in 

 the highest degree questionable. In accordance with all 

 that has been already said, it seems that the most reasonable 

 conclusion we can adopt is to attribute the drift-wood on the 

 coasts of Iceland and Feroe to the American rivers, and that 

 of Siberia, which, in our opinion, has no connection with the 

 other, to the rivers of Northern Asia. 



Evidence of the most incontrovertible kind, in favour of 

 the American oria-in of the drift-wood which is thrown on the 



* Voyage of the Imperial-Russian Naval Lieutenant P. v. Wrangel along 

 the coast of Siberia, and on the Arctic Sea, in the years 1820 to 1824 ; Berlin, 

 1839. In vol. ii., p. 212, of this worl<, we find the following statement : — " The 

 greater part of the drift-wood which is thrown ashore between Cape Schelag- 

 skoy and Cape Tschucotslc is probably of American origin, since it consists for 

 the most part of trunks of fir and pine trees, which grow on none of the rivers 

 that fall into the sea between the mouth of the Indigirka and the Bay of 

 Tschaun. The Lena, indeed, sometimes floats down trees of these kinds from 

 the interior of the continent ; but the distance is too great to admit of their 

 reaching the Indigirka ; and therefore it is rarely the case that a single stray 

 pine-trunk is found among the enormous beds of larch and aspen trunks which 

 the rivers of Siberia carry down." 



VOL. XLV. NO. XC. — OOTOBEIl 1848. U 



