SPECIMENS BROUGHT HOME. 201 



irregularly and mixed iiidiscrirainately with, 

 many vertebrae, ribs, and pieces of skulls. Of 

 course it will be understood that these bones 

 which I mention in different parts of this 

 narrative were not fossilised. We found them 

 in many parts of Spitzbergen, and at all 

 elevations up to that of two hundred feet 

 above the sea. I brought home many speci- 

 mens, which are now in the Museum of the 

 Geological Society. Could an approximation 

 to the age of these bones be in any way 

 arrived at, they would give some chrono- 

 logical data for determining the time which 

 the land whereon they were found has been 

 in emerging from the sea and attaining its 

 present level. My own impression, for many 

 reasons, is, that the whole of Spitzbergen has 

 been gradually rising within the last few 

 hundred years, and that this upheaval is still 

 continuing. 



It is, perhaps, impossible to judge of the 

 length of time which such enormous bones 

 may endure in a climate like this, where they 

 are bound up in ice for eight or nine months 

 out of the twelve ; but allowing, at a 

 guess, four hundred years for bones lying 

 at an elevation of forty feet, which is about 



