102 
Laramie group, an extensive brackish water formation in 
Western North America, which holds a transitional position 
between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic series. Associated with 
Lyrgulifera humerosa, among various other fresh and brackish- 
water forms, is one that I have described under the name of 
Goniobasis cleburni, which is evidently congeneric with the 
Melania (Sermyla) admirabilis of Smith, an associate of Pyreu- 
lifera damoni and P. crassigranulata in Lake Tanganyika. As 
that lake has evidently once been a brackish water sea, it is not 
strange that there should be certain similarities between its mol- 
luscan fauna and the faunz of similar bodies of water that 
existed in Mesozoic and Cenozoic time. It is, however, remark- 
able that the two generic types here especially referred to should 
appear in their integrity living in Africa, and not in North 
America, where the fossil forms occur ; and especially so because 
so many of the fresh-water ‘and land-molluscan types now living 
on the latter continent are found fossil in its Mesozoic and 
Cenozoic strata, C. A, WHITE 
Washington, D.C., November 4 
Velocity of Wind 
THE following observations regarding the velocity of the wind 
in the south-west gale of the 21st and 22nd of November at 
Edinburgh may be of interest. The observations were made by 
me about nine o’clock on the morning of the 22nd, when the 
wind had somewhat moderated :-— 
. Miles per hour. 
Mean velocity - 62°3 
Velocity during a squall... a 71°6 
These observations are calculated from the velocity of clouds of 
smoke issuing from the chimney of the Caledonian Distillery, 
and travelling for a distance of 2100 feet, and are thus free from 
instrumental errors, The chimney is 225 feet high, and its base 
is about 200 feet above the sea-level. 
CHARLES ALEX, STEVENSON 
Arctic Research 
No one can hold in higher honour and respect than I do the 
opinions of the greatest of Arctic navigators, Sir Edward Parry, 
although these opinions were expressed more than half a century 
ago, since when our knowledge of Arctic shores has very materially 
increased. 
My letter in NATURE vol. xxv. p. 53, where alluding to 
navigable waters through channels, &c., in the Arctic Sea, 
specially referred to Arctic America and the lands lying north of 
it, in which category Greenland can scarcely be included, certainly 
not that part of its western shores along which a navigable 
passage is almost invariably to be found. 
The following passages from the extract from ‘‘Sir Edward 
Parry’s writings” (NATURE, vol. xxv. p. 78) are those which 
specially bear upon the statements made by me :— 
“* We experienced a striking example of this kind [ice obstruc- 
tion] in coasting the eastern shore of Melville Peninsula in 1822 
and 1823, the whole of the coast being so loaded with ice as to 
make the navigation extremely difficult and dangerous.” 
I do not in the least doubt this, but difficulties of ice-naviga- 
tion are comparative, and I believe from Eskimo report that the 
opposite side of Fox’s Channel would have been worse. On 
asking the natives of Repulse Bay why they did not go over to 
Southampton Island, which forms the eastern shore (having a 
western aspect) of Sir Thomas Roe’s Welcome, the reply was, 
there were no seals or walruses there, the ice being too much on 
shore. The same is said of the east side of Fox’s Channel. 
The sea on the west side of Melville Peninsula is said never to 
be free from ice+; such was its condition during the summer of 
1846; and in 1847, when I traced its whole shore, there was a fringe 
of heavy and rugged hummocks some miles wide all the way. 
In the springs of 1847 and 1854 the opposite coast, being the 
west side of Committee Bay—having an eastern aspect—bore 
evidence, by the small quantity of rough ice met with, that there 
had been navigable water at some time during the previous 
summer, 
There can, as a rule, be no better or truer guide to the side 
of a channel, inlet, &c., which is /eas¢ ice-obstructed than the 
assembling of marine animals, seals, walruses, and whales (pro- 
vided always that these animals have not been driven ‘away by 
constant attacks to less favoured resorts) along its shores, on 
which the Eskimos have their chief camping-grounds, and of 
* See Rae’s ‘‘ Arctic Expedition,” 1846-7, p. 49. 
NATURE 
[ Dec. 1, 1881 
which there are many along the east shore of Melville Peninsula 
and southward on the same coast-line to lat. 64°, near which the 
Americans have had their chief whaling and sealing stations for 
many years. 
On August 19 and 20, 1859, Sir Leopold McClintock ran 150 
miles down Prince Regent’s Inlet, along the side, having an 
eastern aspect, to Bellot Strait, without seeing a bit of ice except 
one large iceberg, and returned by the same route in 18 
(August Io to 16), but on this occasion was stopped near Fury 
Point by ice, forced in by a strong easterly breeze of four days’ 
duration ; when the wind changed to west the obstruction was 
speedily removed, and there was no farther difficulty. Dundee 
whalers have not infrequently visited Cresswell Bay in this loca- 
lity, and killed whales there. So much for shores having an 
eastern aspect being navigable, notably that of Smith Sound. 
The second passage from ‘‘Parry’s Writings” I wish to 
comment upon is— 
“These facts, when taken together, have long impressed 
me with the idea that there must exist in the Polar regions some 
general motion of the sea towards the west, causing the ice to 
set in that direction, when not impelled by contrary winds or 
local or occasional currents.” 
When it can be proved that permanent currents exist in the 
sea, irrespective of wind influence, we must naturally assume 
that the motion of the sea and of the ice floating on it is in the 
same direction. 
The Resolute, one of Sir Edward Belcher’s ships, abandoned 
near the south entrance of Wellington Channel in 1854, must 
have driven eastward for 300 miles through Barrow Strait and 
Lancaster Sound, into Baffin’s Bay, and was picked up far to 
the south by the Americans some years afterwards, : 
Sir Leopold McClintock in 1859 and 1860 found Bellot Strait 
free from ice, and quite navigable, entering from the east, but 
impenetrably blocked with thick old ice-floes at its western 
extremity. In his chart isa note: ‘‘Bellot Strait, flood and 
permanent current to eastward,” 
Sir Edward Parry experienced a somewhat similar permanent 
easterly current in the Strait of the Fury and Hecla, as the fol- 
lowing extract from Capt. Lyon’s (who commanded one of 
Parry’s ships) journal (p. 275) will show: ‘‘ That there was a 
prevailing set from the westward we had long known, even 
before enterinz the strait, and we saw by the driving of the 
loose ice against an easterly wind that it ran with great force. 
As an extraordinary instance in point, the //ec/a broke adrift on 
the 13th in consequence of a piece of ice parting, and was 
carried (eastward) against a fresh easterly breeze, about a mile 
from the fast floe. All sail being set before the wind, we were 
nearly two hours in recovering this one mile, though to all 
appearance and by the log going between three and four knots 
through the water.” 
Here are exampies of two permanent currents running to the 
east, through straits narrow, it is true, but the only passages 
known to exist in two lands extending about six degrees, or 360 
miles north and south, 
The conclusion to be arrived at seems to be, that the sea to the 
west of these lands is at a higher level than it is to the east of 
them, and consequently if the general motion of the ‘‘sea is 
towards the west,” according to Sir Edward Parrcy’s idea, it 
must, in the localities named, be moving in opposition to its own 
currents, or up hill. J. RAE 
4, Addison Gardens, November 26 
ARE not the facts of ice-accumulations at ‘‘the western sides 
of seas or inlets,” mentioned in your last number (p. 78), to be 
explained by reference to Baer’s law for the flow of rivers? 
This law, corroborated by many observers in all parts of the 
world (see for instance NATURE, vol. xv. p. 207), states, as a 
simple consequence of the earth’s rotation, the deviation to the 
right bank of all rivers of the northern hemisphere running north 
and south, 7.e, to the west, if the flow is from the north, and to 
the east if from the south, Considered from this point of view, 
it may suffice that the masses of ice are borne by currents from 
the north, to account for the accumulations on the western 
borders of these currents, 7c. on ‘‘the eastern coast of any 
portion of land.” I am well aware that the principle in question 
was applied to the theory of ocean-currents, long ere C. E. 
* Along this shore, seal, walrus, and the right whale abounded in 1846, 
1847, and 1855. when I was there. In 1854 constant easterly winds kept the 
ce 
ice close to the land for ten days, so that few marine animals were seen 
during that time, 
