198 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 



matters not what that country may be. Nothing has 

 escaped the penetrating eye of M. Nordenskjoeld ; he has 

 found and collected thousands of specimens of fossil plants, 

 of coals of Jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and even of recent 

 production, in a desolate archipelago, which is altogether 

 devoid of roads, of means of transport, of meaos of access 

 to places, and almost of the possibility of living/ 



Like the greater part of the lands in the extreme 

 north, Spitzbergen is deeply cut up ; it bristles with ice- 

 peaks, whence the name has been given. Besides the 

 principal land, which has an outline whereby that it forms 

 two peninsulas named respectively Eastern Spitzbergen 

 and Western Spitzbergen, two other lands are associated 

 with the first of these peninsulas : the first of these is 

 North -East Land, separated from Eastern Spitzbergen by 

 Hinlopen Straits; the other, Wiche's Land, situated to 

 the south ; while separated from this by Olga Straits, and 

 from Spitzbergen by Stoer Fiord, is Edge Island. The 

 entire archipelago extends over at least four degrees, from 

 Cape South to the Seven Isles, almost touching the 81st 

 of latitude, 



' The explorations, for which we are indebted to M. Nor- 

 denskjoeld and the Swedish expeditions, have had prin- 

 cipally for their object the western coast. Along this 

 coast, slashed with immense bays and deep fiords, there is 

 no lack of fossil plants belonging to all the formations 

 which have been specified \ and from an examination of 

 these there are obtained indications of those remote lands 

 having formerly been continuous with Nova Zembla and 

 Northern Russia, if not with a vast continent stretching 

 from the Pole to the Equator and beyond it, and compris- 

 ing the lands of America as well as those of Europe and 

 Asia, and, it may be, Africa besides. The indications 

 referred to are these : 



' As the terrestrial floras belonging to each of the for- 

 mations which have been named, when observed at syn- 

 chronic points, far remote from one another, manifest 



