48 
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. 
REPORT ON THE PLANT-REMAINS FROM THE BEACON SANDSTONE. 
By E. A. Newell Arber, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., University Demonstrator 
in Palseobotany, Cambridge. 
The remains collected by tlie ‘ Discovery ’ Antarctic Expedition, and regarded as 
probably of the nature of fossil plants, are unfortunately of little value botanically. 
The material was derived from two localities, viz., the hill B x in the South-west 
Arm of the Ferrar Glacier, and the Inland Forts. The specimens of Beacon Sandstone, 
containing much carbonaceous material, from the bill Bj were collected by Mr. Ferrar 
on the 12th and 13th of November, 1903, at a height of 50 feet above the level of 
the ice (see p. 41). Several of these show fair-sized, carbonaceous impressions or 
markings, which, in all probability, are of vegetable origin. One example somewdiat 
resembles in appearance a piece of petrified wood, but a microscopic section made 
from this material has failed to show any trace of organic structure. 
The specimens from the Inland Forts are pieces of a pale yellow sandstone, 
obtained by Mr. Ferrar on November 1G, 1903, at a spot some 800 feet up the West 
Groin (see p. 43). Some of these show one or more series of irregular puckerings, 
consisting of slight pits or depressions, sometimes lined by a small amount of 
carbonaceous material. It appears, however, to lie impossible to form any opinion as 
to whether these features are due to vegetable agency or otherwise. 
The imperfect evidence presented by these specimens will neither permit of any 
opinion as to the botanical nature or affinities of the fossils themselves, nor of the 
geological age of the beds in which they occur. Their discovery may, however, lie 
regarded as affording indications that, at some period or other in geological time, 
vegetation flourished so far south as latitude 77k° ■ Such a conclusion i$ of great 
geological interest, and is in harmony with the fact, now ascertained beyond doubt 
by the discovery * of abundant evidence of varied vegetations belonging to several 
different geological epochs, that the climate of the Antarctic, as of the Arctic regions, 
has been much more genial at more than one period in the past than at the present 
day. 
Nathorst, A. G., Sur la flore fossile des regions antarctiques, Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci., 1904, cxxxviii, p. 1447. 
