82 



NATURE 



{June 2,, 1875 



inhabitants of great depths, and consequently rare in 

 collections, eighteen only being well represented in 

 those of Britain. 



Dr. Morch's list of the Mollusca, including land, fresh- 

 water, and marine forms, reaches a total of 216, which are 

 arranged after his own modification of Latreille's classifi- 

 cation. As this is not the classification usually adopted 

 or known in England, it may be well to indicate it. The 

 Mollusca proper are divided into five classes. The first, 

 Androgyna, Morch, includes the five orders : Grophila, 

 F<fr., or land shells ; Hy grophila, F^r., or freshwater 

 shells ; PtetiogUssata, Trochsel ; Gymnobranchia, Cuv. ; 

 and Pteropoda^ Cuv. The second class, Dioica, Latr., is 

 divided into the three ordeis, Tanio-, Toxo-, and Rhachi- 

 glossata of Trochsel, after the characters of their tongues. 

 The third class, Exocephala, Latr., is divided in the same 

 way, into Rhipido- and Heteroglossataj while the remain- 

 ing two classes, CepJtalopoda diVidi Acephala, are undivided, 

 although there are enumerated species of the different 

 orders as usually distinguished in the latter class. The 

 BracMopoda figure for four species in addition to the above, 

 under the title of BracMonopoda. The Tuiiicata number 

 thirteen species, and require revision, while the Polyzoa 

 mount to sixty-three. Of the Insects nothing is recorded 

 since Schiodte's list in 1857 of 114 species ; of Arachnida 

 there are almost none but a few Acari. The list of 

 Crustacea is a large one, and has been revised by Dr. 

 Liitken for this Manual. The whole number is 184, of 

 which no less than seventy are Amphipoda. Yet this hst 

 is plainly incomplete, the Ostracoda being represented 

 by one species only, while in the next paper Dr. Brady 

 enumerates twenty-four from their shells. The other 

 classes of animals have similar lists. In the Armelids 

 most families are represented by a few species ; the 

 various Entozoa are tabulated. The Echinoderms are 

 thirty-four, containing only one Echinid : the remaining 

 lists are short ones, except that of the fixed Hydrozoa, 

 and the Sponges, which are pretty numerous. It is 

 useless, of course, to catalogue " species " of Fora- 

 minifera, and only a few notes are accordingly given of 

 the various generic forms which have been met with at 

 various depths, with a description of the nature of the 

 materials in which they occur. 



From animals we pass to plants. The first paper is 

 the well-known one by Dr. Hooker, " Outlines of the 

 Distribution of Arctic Plants," from the Linnean Society's 

 Transactions for 1861, which has been reprinted with 

 little alteration, chiefly from want of time, the more 

 recent discoveries being given in foot-notes. The list of 

 flowering plants contains those from the districts of 

 Arctic East America and Greenland only, which number 

 552, of which about two-fifths are Monocotyledons, and 

 the remainder Dicotyledons. Mr. Taylor's paper, on the 

 Plants of Davis' Strait, though without the generalisations 

 of the former, gives more details on the habitats and loca- 

 lities of the specimens ; but this paper also is one of old 

 date (1862). The Cryptogams are enumerated in various 

 papers on the several sections to which separate students 

 usually devote themselves j the most important being 

 Dr. Lindsay's, on the Lichen Flora of Greenland and 

 other Arctic Regions, from the Transactions of the 

 Botanical Society of Edinburgh for 1869. As lichens 

 will grow where nothing else will, their various species 



may naturally be expected to make a large figure in an 

 Arctic flora ; and so they actually do, as they number by 

 themselves half as many as all the flowering plants 

 together. The Diatoms, which in their vast numbers 

 cause the discoloration of some portions of the Arctic 

 seas, form the subject of another interesting paper by 

 Dr. Brown. 



When we reach the portion of the Manual relating to 

 Geology, we find some part of the information to be of 

 very ancient date, belonging to the days of Flaetz-Trap- 

 Formation and other exploded terms, which now convey 

 no information whatever. The interest of these papers, 

 written by Sir Charles Giesecke in the beginning of this 

 century, is mineralogical. He was a careful collector and 

 diligent observer, and his records are still valuable. One 

 of his chief discoveries was an easily fused mineral he 

 named cryolite, which is now an abundant source of 

 aluminium. To this two papers are devoted. Shortly 

 following these we have Dr. Sutherland's paper, no less 

 valuable because some twenty years old, on the Geolo- 

 gical and Glacial Phenomena of the Coasts of Davis' 

 Straits and Baffin's Bay, which contains many observa- 

 tions on the ice-phenomena both of small and large 

 masses. The Miocene Flora of Greenland, so admirably 

 described by Prof. Oswald Heer in his " Flora Fossilis 

 Arctica," and catalogued in other works, cannot of course 

 in a small Manual like the present receive more than a 

 comparatively brief notice, nor can it be needed, as 

 it is an essentially standard work. There is also a Cre- 

 taceous Flora catalogued from the "Kome Formation" 

 of the north coast of Noursoak Peninsula. Undoubtedly 

 the most interesting paper in this section is that of Prof. 

 Nordenskjold, extracted from the Geological Mdgazinc, 

 in which he gave an account of his fruitful expedition 

 to Greenland in the year 1870. The united papers that 

 detail his experiences are together of considerable length. 

 He made one of the very few attempts that have yet been 

 made to enter the great continental icefield, and suc- 

 ceeded in passing over thirty miles, the interesting details 

 of the journey being here recorded ; and much valuable 

 information was thus obtained. The new expedition will 

 have great opportunities of such explorations, which is 

 a reason for regretting the absence from it of any pro- 

 fessed geologist. Prof. Nordenskjold gives an account 

 also of the various strata of the coast, which exhibit beds 

 of Cretaceous and Miocene age, with some basalts which 

 are associated with them. One of the most interesting 

 discoveries made by him was that of three large masses of 

 meteoric iron at Ovifak, of which a woodcut and analyses 

 are here given, with full accounts of its various points of 

 interest. This latter recital is very naturally followed by 

 that portion of Dr. Flight's recent contributions to the 

 Geo logical Magazine on. Meteorites, which relates to those 

 found in Greenland. This contains the results of the 

 newer Swedish Expedition of 1871, together with further 

 details about the stones themselves, as compared with 

 other meteorites. The two chief remaining papers in 

 this division are, first, a valuable abstract of geological 

 notes on Noursoak Peninsula and Disco Island, by Dr. 

 Robert Brown, which is only just published in the Trans- 

 actions of the Glasgow Geological Society, and contains 

 a succinct account of the geology of that part of Green- 

 land as made out by various explorers ; and secondly, a 



