Oct. 23, 1879] 



NATURE 



609 



one about seven miles long, and standing out into the 

 sea with its perpendicular walls. South of Wahlenberg's 

 Bay a bed of Permian fossils in great abundance was met 

 with ; these were the first fossils found 

 in North Spitzbergen. After collect- 

 ing a large quantity of fossils at An- 

 gelin's Mount, on the south-west of 

 North-East Land, the party rowed 

 along the shore to another mountain, 

 2,000 feet high, which strongly re- 

 sembled it. This they named Lovdn's 

 Mount. Its upper part consists of 

 hyperite, and with its flat, steep, and 

 black sides strongly resembles a roof. 

 Underlying the hyperite are horizontal 

 lime- and sand-stone strata with nearly 

 perpendicular faces towards the sound 

 giving the whole mountain the appear- 

 ance of a regular colossal building. 

 Another rich collection of fossils was 

 made here. The party then proceeded 

 down the strait, but after two hours' 

 rowing were met by fast ice which 

 obliged them to turn. They then rowed 

 along the west side of the sound, taking 

 an hour to pass a broad glacier. After 

 it they came to another which lay like 

 a stratum of rock on a perpendicular 

 cliff of hyperite, and accordingly 

 tumbled with its ice over the rocks 

 into the sea. The hyperite was found 

 to be beautifully polished and marked, 

 and here, as at several other places, 

 were found many signs that the ice in 

 former times had occupied a larger 

 area on Spitzbergen. Between Dym 

 Point and Cape Fanshawe the Swedes 

 passed the greatest auk-fell they had 

 hitherto seen. Here also was found, 

 rising from the sea to a height of 1,000 

 feet, a perpendicular wall of hyperite, 

 ever>where split vertically into basalt- 

 like, upright, four- or eight-sided columns, standing 

 free or only connected with the main rock by a small 

 corner, and sometimes crowned capital- 

 wise by a stratum of greyish-white 

 limestone. After passing Cape Fan- 

 shawe the party next entered Lomme 

 Bay, on the west side of which they 

 found the largest glacier they had yet 

 seen on Spitzbergen. It is about ten 

 miles wide, and projects into the sound 

 with a curved front. The stratification 

 of the ice is horizontal. At Shoal 

 Point, at the entrance to Hinlopen 

 Strait, the beach was everywhere 

 covered with an enormous mass of 

 drift-wood among which are found 

 pieces of pumice-stone, birch-bark, 

 cork, poles, and floats from the Lofod- 

 den fisheries, with other things which 

 had been carried hither by currents 

 from the south. The drift-wood 

 formed a broad line along the beach. 

 Farther up was another line, where 

 the water now scarcely comes even 

 during spring tides, probably elevated 

 by a raising of the land. In this line 

 the drift-wood was far older and under- 

 going decomposition. While Torell 

 was examining all this, he found .among 

 other things a well-preserved bean of 

 the West Indian plant Entada gigalobium. This bean, 

 which is upwards of an inch and a half across, floats 



with the Gulf Stream through the Atlantic, is found 

 not unfrequently en the coast of Norway, and being also 

 found on North Spitzbergen, affords the most convincing 



^^ 



Bean of Enttida gigalohiuju (natural size). 



evidence that the Gulf Stream reaches this high latitude. 

 After the return from Hinlopen Strait, Torell and 



In I'lc Inti:rior uf Kind's Bay. 



Nordenskjold explored a part of the north coast of North 

 East Land. Near Waygatz Islands, on the south of 



