148 Dr. Traill's Description of some Minerals [Aug. 



These are remarkable for their perfect similarity to some of the 

 druses found in the amygdaloid of Ferroe. The cavity has first 

 a thin lining of chalcedony, not above l-30th of an inch in 

 thickness, yet pretty uniformly spread over the irregular surface 

 of the cavity in the matrix : then appears a coat of an opaque 

 snow-white substance, hard, and brittle, which easily scratches 

 glass, and is not melted by the common blowpipe, nor acted on 

 by nitric acid. It passes by imperceptible shades into pyramids 

 of transparent quartz. On comparing this specimen with one 

 brought by my friend Major Petersen, from Ferroe, and another 

 from Kiose Syssel, in Iceland, the similarity of their structure 

 was such, that they might have passed as fragments of the same 

 specimen. 



5. Chalcedony in small veins, and in druses. 



6. Calc Spar, both massive and in rhombic crystals, which 

 appear to have lined cavities in the trap rock. 



7. Iron Pyrites disseminated in minute grains in the latter. 

 When we add to these the well authenticated occurrence of 



coal in considerable quantity in that part of New South Shetland 

 from which my specimens were brought, we must consider that 

 region as belonging to a floetz trap formation ; and we cannot 

 fail to remark the strong resemblance between the geological 

 features of the new Antarctic land, and some of the countries 

 near, and within the Arctic circle. Should it be afterwards 

 found, as is highly probable, that New South Shetland consists 

 of a cluster of large islands ; the analogy of this group to the 

 land around Baffin's Bay will connect in geographical relation 

 the two extremes of our planet. 



The existence of unchanged bones of different cetaceous animals, 

 and of seals, on the top of the mountains in New South Shet- 

 land is fully confirmed ; and there is now in my possession the 

 skull of an animal belonging to the class Mammalia, found on 

 the top of a considerable mountain in that countiy, which, from 

 a hasty inspection, appears to have belonged to a large species 

 of seal. The quantity of those comparatively recent organic 

 remains, which are said to occur in New South Shetland, and 

 the want of inhabitants on its inhospitable shores, leave us no 

 more plausible conjecture to account for their present extraordi- 

 nary situation, than that the hills where they occur have, at no 

 very distant period, been suddenly elevated from the bosom of 

 the deep by some vast convulsion, most probably the effect of 

 subterranean fire. Should this be the case, it will tend to con- 

 firm the extensive agency of volcanic fire in moulding the sur- 

 face of our globe, which the invaluable researches of the 

 illustrious Humboldt, among the Cordilleras of both Americas, 

 and the deductions of Von Buch, have rendered highly probable. 

 Indeed the candid °-eolo2,ist must acknowledge, that some of 

 our most consistent and celebrated speculators on the theory of 

 the earth have not sufficiently estimated the extensive agency of 



