April Z, 1875] 



NATURE 



449 



at various levels from 32 to no feet above the high-tide 

 mark of Smith's Sound, and everywhere along the known 

 coast of Greenland. The hollows are described as being 

 filled up withglacier-clay.containing in places Echinoder- 

 mata, Crustacea,and Mollusca of local Arctic species, with 

 the exception of two, Glycimcris siliqna and Panopwa 

 norvei^ica, and extending up to 500 feet above the sea. In 

 the banks overlooking the glaciers, and in nodules of this 

 clay, occur the well-known impressions of the Angmaksaett 

 {Mallotus arciicus, O. Fabr.), a fish still living in i:)avis 

 Straits ; of which nodules several examples are preserved 

 in the British Museum, spUt longitudinally. The great 

 density of the nodules is noticeable, and the analogy 

 to the iron-stone nodules of the coal measures containing 

 plants ver)' striking. 



Recent depression of West Coast of Greenland. — Arc- 

 tander, between 1777-9, noticed that land in a firth called 

 Igalliko (60° 43') was submerged at spring tides, though 

 buildings with walls five feet in thickness still remained on 

 it ; half a centur\- later, the tract was entirely submerged, 

 the ruins being alone visible. 

 Julianshaab was founded atthe mouth of the firth in 1776, 

 near a rock called the '■ Castle " by the Danes, by which 

 they erected a storehouse, submerged when Dr. Pingel, 

 of Copenhagen, described it in 1835 ; and he found a 

 village deserted near the glacier which now separates 

 Fredrikshaab from Fiskernaes, on an island now over- 

 flowed. The Moravian village of Lichtenfeld, founded 

 in 1758, had to be moved forty years later, and the poles 

 to w-hich the omiaks (women's boats) were tied still 

 remain uncovered at every low tide. Houses of the time 

 of Egede, the Apostle of Greenland, 1721-36, have now 

 the sea flowing into them at high tide. 



A/tempt to advance from the coast on the inland ice. — In 

 1728 a Danish expedition was sent to endeavour to re-dis- 

 cover the lost (East) Greenland, but failed. In 1751 a 

 Danish merchant, Dalager, advanced inland from about 

 62' 31', and in two days reached some mountain peaks 

 projecting above the ice, eight miles within the ice- 

 field, but was then obliged to retreat, and returned to 

 Fredrikshaab. In July 1870 Prof. Nordenskjold and 

 Dr. Berggren advanced from the head of Auleitsivik- 

 fjord over the inland ice thirty miles, to a point 2,200 

 Jeet above the level of the sea, in !at. 68° 22' N., passing 

 magnificent rivers, which, flowing between walls of blue ice, 

 eventually disappeared in vertical chasms in the ice, 

 probably 2,000 feet in depth. On the surface of the ice 

 they found a sandy trachytic mineral, scattered like a grey 

 sand, which has been named Kryokonite, and on it, and 

 sometimes on the ice, brown polycellular alga;, the dark 

 masses of which, absorbing the sun's rays, cause the ice 

 to melt, forming the deep holes which traverse the surface. 



In Melville Bay, N.V/. Greenland, Sutherland describes 

 the glaciers reaching the coast and forming a continuous 

 wall seventy to eighty miles in length, and 1,200 to 1,500 

 feet in height, of which about one-eighth is above ; the 

 Esquimaux required 300 fathoms of line to reach the 

 bottom of the face of the ice, in halibut fishing. In lat. 

 68°, near Clanshaven, and where valleys come down to 

 the coast, the thickness of the ice is sometimes as much 

 as 2,400 feet. The largest icebergs are launched from 

 Melville Bay. Further north, beyond Cape York, the 

 glaciers are sinaller, through greater cold, producing 

 smaller evaporation, while further south the air is charged 

 with watery vapour from the Atlantic* 



M. Delesse describes shelly deposits on sand beds in 

 the Arctic seas east of Southampton Island and in Fox's 

 Channel, and as far north as 77° near Smith's Sound, at 

 depths of more than 200 metres in some instances, the 

 cold being less intense at this level. In Hudson Straits, 

 Baffin's Bay, and the various straits intersecting Arctic 

 lands, muddy sediment prevails, due to the waste of the 

 palseozoic schists of the North American continent and 



* Quar. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. ix. 



the precipitation of sediment being favoured by the im- 

 peding effect of the land-locked and ice-locked seas on the 

 agitation of the waters, and to the immense quantities of 

 mud brought into the sea by the glaciers which extend 

 over the Arctic regions. 



In Davis Straits, from Cape Farewell to Smith's Sound, 

 the channel, varying in depth froin two to 200 fathoms, is 

 stated by Dr. Sutherland to swarm with Echinoderms and 

 brittle Starfish. la Melville Bay, Ascidians, Cirrinedes, 

 and seaweed attached to the rocks, do not appear to be 

 often grazed by the bergs, tliough at times t!ie\ reap im- 

 mense crops of Laminaria, with broken shells of Mya 

 and Saxicava, entangled in their leafy masses, torn from a 

 depth of 100 fathoms. When the bottom i- \e y hard 

 the berg is brought to a stand, and even when ccv.sisting 

 of soft mud or clay the same effect is produced by a bi;rg, 

 moraine or talus being pushed up by the movement of the 

 berg. In Davis Straits the bergs are so covered with earthy 

 matter as to resemble rocks, boulders weighing 100 tons 

 often lying on their surface or frozen into their mass. Sub- 

 marine banks thrown up in this way constantly increase in 

 size by the clustering of small bergs on them, and form 

 the haunt of shoals of cod and halibut, and myriads of 

 sharks. As the ice melts, brown slime, liberated from 

 the ice, is rolled into pellets by the ripple of the water, 

 and is deposited in beds near the coast, resembling the 

 berg-mehl of Sweden. 



Prof A. E. Nordenskjold, who accompanied the Swedish 

 Expedition to Greenland in May 1870, describes the water 

 off that coast as being a decided greyish brown colour, 

 especially in Davis Strait, off Fiskernaes, and at other 

 times greyish-green. This was found to be due to brown 

 and green slimes of organic origin, which spread over 

 hundreds of thousands of square miles, and afford food 

 for not only Crustacea and Annelides, but to swarms of 

 birds and to the whale ; this slime was examined by Dr. 

 Oberg, and found to consist of various species of siliceous 

 Diatomaceas.* 



South Greenland. — Prof. G. C. Laube,f the geologist 

 attached to the second German North Polar Expedition, 

 in his geological map of South Greenland, represents the 

 east coast, as far as 61" N., as chiefly composed of granite 

 and gneiss, which also extends from Cape Farewell to 

 Julianshaab, near which, at the head of Tunnudleorbik, 

 red sandstone and amphibolite occur, between which and 

 the sea there is a large arm of hornblende granite with 

 a belt of zircon granite intervening. Westward is a 

 syenite granite, as far as Nunarsoit. 



Dr. Karl Vrba, % who examined microscopically more 

 than 200 rocks collected by Laube, of which the exact 

 locality v/as known, found the following varieties :— 

 Gneiss, granite, eurite, syenite, orthoclase porphyry, 

 diorite, diabase, gabbro, and weichstem, including ser- 

 pentine, &c. 



South-West Greenland.— In lat. 61° N., Dr. Pingel, the 

 geologist attached to the Danish Expedition of 1828, 

 under Graah, to seek the lost Icelandic colonies, dis- 

 covered the red sandstone of Igalliko and of the fjord 

 of Tunnudleorbik. No fossils have been discovered, but it 

 is beheved to be of Devonian age ; the rock is hard and 

 composed of fused quartz particles. This is probably 

 the same bed as that found by the German Expedition a 

 little to the south. 



The gneiss, mica schist, hornblende schist, syenite, &c., 

 pierced by granite veins § of Southern Greenland, continue 

 throughout the whole of the west coast. From it the 

 Greenlanders derive the steatite from which they make 

 their lamps and other utensils. C. E. De R.\nce 



(7> be continued.) 



* Geological Ma^azltif, vol. ix, p. 398. The Farmer, Jan. i, l863, p 16. 



t Sitzungsberichle der Kaiserlichcn Akad. dcr Wissenschalten, 187 

 p. 17. 



t Op. cit, 1S74, p. 62. 



i From these narrow veins of granite, rich in felspar, Von Cotta recordi 

 the presence of orthite and titanitc. 



