FOSSIL CANNON-BALLS. 263 



bergen more than the total absence of pebbly 

 beaches. I was especially requested by a distin- 

 guished geologist to direct my attention to this 

 matter, and I did so ; but I nowhere saw, on any 

 part of the coast between Byk Yse Islands and Ice 

 Fiord, nor among the Thousand Islands, any thing 

 approaching to what can be called a pebbly beach. 

 Nine tenths of the coast consists of glacier, rocks, 

 and clay. In some places there are bays with 

 sandy beaches, and in others I have observed great 

 accumulations of coarse rhomboidal gravel, both 

 on the beach and at different elevations, but I 

 never saw a beach composed of rounded, water- 

 worn pebbly stones on any part of the coasts of 

 Spitzbergen. 



The mountains about this fiord are composed of 

 a friable, crumbling limestone, which in great part 

 has a sort of brown tinge, as if impregnated with 

 oxide of iron. They are perfectly chock-full of 

 fossils, so much so as to look as if they were actu- 

 ally composed of fossils in some places. I gather- 

 ed many specimens, and I also picked up, in the bed 

 of a torrent, three stones so exactly spherical, and so 

 highly ferruginous-looking, that my Petropaulauski 

 man-of-warVman stoutly maintained that if the 

 "other stones" I gave him to carry were the fossils 

 of clams and cockles, these must undoubtedly be 

 the fossils of cannon-shot of different calibres. 



There is a good walrus-boat lying on the beach 

 in a small bay here. This boat was found two 



