NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 449 
To make clear to my readers the extraordinary difference of 
temperature between the sea of Paleozoic times and that now 
encircling the North Pole, I cannot do better than quote a few lines 
from Mr. Etheridge’s exhaustive report on the Palzontological 
collections of the Expedition :— 
“These undoubted reef-forming corals of the Silurian epoch were just 
_as much inhabitants of warm water in southern latitudes at that period as 
are the Sclerodermata of to-day in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Oceans ; 
and as we know of no compound coral that will exist at a lower temperature 
than 68° F., and as the surface-waters under the equator in the Pacific 
have a temperature of 85° F., and in the Atlantic 83°, it seems clear that 
the range from 68° to 85° F. is best adapted to and not too high for the 
growth of the reef-making species. We may fairly assume that the 
temperature of the Polar waters during Paleozoic times was as high as that 
of the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic now, where coral-reefs abound. We are 
not justified in supposing that the laws regulating oceanic life were very 
different then from those now existing (in the same groups) under the 
equator or between the tropics. These corals were forms of life which must 
have been tropical in habits and requirements.” * 
At Cape Hilgard we had twenty-four hours on shore, and as the 
Silurian rocks of that locality are especially rich in fossils I made 
a very interesting collection. Birds were not numerous; during 
the day I observed only one Glaucous Gull and three Turnstones ; 
one of these was shot, and found to have its stomach filled with 
the seeds of Draba alpina. Others of our party killed six 
Ptarmigan, Lagopus rupestris. 
On the 16th August the ships were firmly beset close to Cape 
Hayes. Landing with Captain Nares and Markham, we came 
across the fresh footprints of a bear on the ice-foot. Vegetation 
was very scanty; the yellow poppy, arctic willow, with two or 
three species of saxifrage were all the plants we observed. A 
butterfly, Argynnis, was captured. It is difficult to imagine how 
Lepidoptera can exist in a climate which during the months of 
June, July and August has a mean temperature of less than three 
degrees above freezing and an annual mean of four degrees below 
zero, with falls of snow during the warmest months of the year. 
About a mile south of Cape Hayes a pair of Ivory Gulls were 
nesting in the precipitous limestone cliff. We were attracted to 
the spot by their shrill cries, and the movements of one of the pair 
* Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc., 1878, p. 578. 
3M 
