74 DEBATEABLE POINTS BEGAEDING GBEENLAND. 



tives of the banks of the same shell which are met with in the 

 same island. Mr. Nathorst, of the Swedish Geological Survey, 

 tells me that in 1870 he examined these shell-banks, and found 

 one made up of Mytilus resting upon a scratched rock surface (now 

 far removed from any glacier), and the scratches ran parallel with 

 the fjord. The Mytilus still lives in Greenland, as does also Cyprina 

 islandica, but Littorina littorea does not. Heer notices these circum- 

 stances in his paper « Die Miocens Flora und Fauna Spitzbergens.' 1 

 It would be worth while, I think, for the naturalists attached to the 

 Arctic Expedition to examine any raised beaches they may come 

 across, with a view to discover whether the facts bear on the con- 

 clusions drawn by Swedish geologists, for it is difficult to believe 

 that a considerable change of climate could take place in Spits- 

 bergen without also leaving traces in North Greenland." All 

 these questions are of deep philosophical interest, and to their 

 solution the members of this Expedition are invited to apply them- 

 selves. We have shown, and the other portions of this manual only 

 confirm the remark, that in Greenland there is still much for the 

 geographer to do, and that when an ancient mariner wrote, 200 

 years ago, that " Greenland is a country very farre Northward, 

 . . . the land wonderfull mountainous, the mountaines all the year 

 long full of yce and snow, the plaines in part bare in summer-time 

 . . . where growes neither tree nor hearbe . . . except scurvy-grass 

 and sorrell . . . the sea . . . as barren as the land, affording no 

 fish but whales, sea-horses, seals, and another small fish . . . and 

 thither there is a yearely fleet of English sent," 2 he only wrote in 

 accordance with the knowledge of his time — and time has not 

 confirmed honest Edward Pellham's dictum. 



1 ' Ofversigt af Korigl. Svenska Vet. Akad. Forhand.' Band. 8, N r . 7, p. 23. 



2 In reality, though after the fashion of his time styling it " Greenland," the 

 devout old mariner — first of that long line of English seamen who have had the 

 courage to winter in Spitzbergen, and the good fortune to come back to tell 

 the tale — was describing Spitzbergen ; but the quotation is sufficiently apropos to 

 remain without any very strict geographical criticism. 



