NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 165 
At mid-day of the 14th, to our great joy, Beaumont’s party 
was descried on the moving pack. Not a minute was lost in 
despatching a relief party from the ‘Alert, and early on the 
following morning every surviving member of the Expedition 
met together. The two vessels were detained a week longer in 
Discovery Bay before the ice in the channel gave us an oppor- 
tunity of moving southwards. This was a very enjoyable period 
of the voyage, as the weather proved remarkably fine, and though 
we were never able to be absent for any length of time from the 
ships, yet we had many opportunities of landing. 
Earlier in the year, Mr. Hart, the naturalist on board the 
‘Discovery,’ had found a seam of coal of great thickness exposed 
in a valley a couple of miles north of their winter-quarters. On 
my first visit, in company with Mr. Hart, to this interesting spot 
we discovered a few leaf-impressions, which seemed undoubtedly 
referable to plants that had already occurred in the Miocene 
deposits of Greenland and Spitsbergen. We therefore concluded 
that this coal-bed was a lignite of Miocene age, and not true 
carboniferous coal. On a second visit to this locality, I formed 
a very considerable collection of these leaf-impressions.* ° 
On our return to Europe this collection was submitted 
to Professor Heer, of Zurich, with the following results :—- 
He found the collection to contain twenty-six species of plants. 
Of these eighteen are known from the Miocene deposits of the 
Arctic zone. It shows seventeen species with Spitsbergen (lati- 
tude 76°—79° N.) and eight species with Greenland (latitude 
70°—71° N.). The Grinnell Land flora consequently more 
closely approaches the Miocene of Northern Spitsbergen, which 
lies from three to four degrees of latitude farther south than that 
of Greenland, situated almost eleven degrees farther south. With 
the Miocene flora of Europe it has six species in common, with 
that of America (Alaska and Canada) four, and with that of Asia 
(Saghalien) four also. Representatives of plants now living ex- 
clusively in the Arctic zone are wanting among the fossil species 
of Grinnell Land; but, on the other hand, most of the genera 
still extend into the Arctic zone, viz., Hquisetum, Pinus, Phrag- 
mites, Carex, Populus, Betula, Corylus, Ulmus, and Nymphea. 
Of these, however, only Equisetum, Carex, and Populus extend 
* This collection, now in the British Museum, has been figured and described by 
Prof. Heer, ‘Flora Fossilis Arctica,’ vol. v. 
