204 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



begird Baffin's Bay, and one portion at least of Greenland 

 and of Spitzbergen. The Upper Devonian, the different 

 stages of the carboniferous system, especially the mountain 

 limestone, which represent the marine deposits immedi- 

 ately anterior to the era of the coal, are equally exten- 

 sively spread over the regions bordering on the Pole. The 

 Parry Archipelago, beyond the 76th degree of North lati- 

 tude, Bathurst Island, Spitzbergen, towards the 79th 

 degree of North latitude, and Bear Island, situated 

 between Spitzbergen and the North Cape, under 70 30' 

 North latitude, supply repeated proofs of this, based on 

 the observation of the characteristic features of each of 

 these stages, in which nothing distinguishes either the 

 minerological aspect or the fossils from what they are in 

 Europe and in America thirty degrees further to the south. 

 For a long time the professor of palaeontology has 

 remarked that while the deposits of coal become excep- 

 tional in the direction of the south beyond the 35th 

 degree, they show themselves continuously in the north 

 under the highest latitudes. It must follow that the 

 climatic conditions, or simply the geographical ones, 

 belonging to the production of coal, which most observers 

 agree in considering as having been formed in vast peat 

 bogs, have not, during the carboniferous period, manifested 

 themselves everywhere, but only in a zone, the southern 

 limits of which can be traced approximately, whilst towards 

 the north it must stretch itself very far, and extend pro- 

 bably even to the Pole/ 



In the coal formations we have reached the remains of 

 a period subsequent to the deposit of the great bulk of 

 the mountain limestone. Dr. Heer thus, in Flora Fossile 

 Artica (par. ii.), describes the vegetation of that age : 



' Towards the end of the Devonian period the dryland 

 notably increased in the northern hemisphere ; it was 

 there an epoch of elevation from the depth of the sea. 

 After this extension of continental land having proceeded 

 on a vast scale, there began a new period, that of the 



