f 



April 22, 1 875 J 



NATURE 



493 



Melville Island. — Several coal seams occur in the sand- 

 stones beneath the carboniferous limestone, striking 

 about E.N.E. The coal burns with a bright flame, with 

 much smoke, and resembles some of the gas coals of 

 Scotland. 



In Eglinton Island, between Melville Island and Prince 

 Patrick's, carboniferous limestone with sihceous and 

 ferruginous grits occur, capped by a patch of lias; and 

 highly crystalline gypsum was found N.W. of Melville 

 Island. 



Bvam Martin Islaml—Tvio sandstones occur, one soft 

 streaky, passing into purple sandstone like that of 

 Wolstenholme Sound, the other fine grained, greyish- 

 yellow, with coal seams, like that of Cape Hamilton, 

 Baring Island, containing Terebratula ■primipihiris. Von 

 Buch, and several Eifel forms, and of therefore Upper 

 Silurian or Devonian species. The coal seams occur 

 at a height of 350 feet above the sea, and are described as 

 lignites by Salter. 



Exmouth, Table, and Princess Islands, between North 

 Cornwall and North Devon, with Depot Point on the 

 north coast of the latter, form a remarkably fossiliferous 

 area, from which a large number of fossils were col- 

 lected by Sir Edward Belcher in 1855, and described 

 by the late Mr. Salter.* Exmouth Island (77° N. 

 lat. and 95° W. long.) rises to a height of 570 feet ; the 

 base is soft sandstone abruptly terminating except to 

 the west, overlaid by limestone dipping to the west at 7°, 

 containing Zaphientis, Spirijer heilhavii, and other 

 species of carboniferous limestone type ; at the lop a patch 

 of lias occurs, from which the vertebra and ribs were 

 collected by Belcher, determined by Prof. Owen to 

 belong to an Ichthyosaurus near to /. acutus of the 

 Whiiby Lias. 



Lias fossils had previously been discovered by Lieut. 

 Anjou, of the Russian Navy, and described by Wrangel, 

 from New Siberia in Asia, in 74° N. lat., but the presence 

 of lias in these high latitudes remained unnoticed until 

 Belcher's diicovery at E.xmouth hland, after which several 

 fossils were brought home by Sir Leopold M'Clintock and 

 Admiral Sherard Osborne, amongst them Ammonite 

 il/'C//«^iXv/of Haughton.f A remarkably fossiliferous 

 patch of lias also occurs at Point Wilkie, in Prince 

 Patrick's Island, resting on carboniferous limestones, &c. 

 Rlivnchonella of Silurian species were (ound by the 

 Rev.'Longmuir in the ballast of a ship from the coast of 

 Prince Albert's Land ; it is worthy of note that one 

 species of Ihynchonella, R. psiltacea, still lives on in these 

 Arctic Seas, and, according to Mr. Gwyn Jefireys, as far 

 south as Drontheim. 



Corn-a'd/lis Islands consist of Silurian rocks with 

 Syrintiopora genii iilata. On its coast and on that of 

 Beecliey Island Dr. Sutherland describes marine glacial 

 drift, with Arctic shells, as occurring up to a height of 

 1, coo feet above the sea, and the presence of blocks of 

 granite and anthracite on the shores of Lancaster Sound, 

 brought by coast-ice. 



At Dundas Island, in lat. 76° 15', one of Capt. Penny s 

 crew found a Silurian trilobite, and preserved it, tied in 

 his shirt, when the I oat had to be abandoned and a 

 retreat eflected. The presence of Silurian rocks at a 

 point so far north, and of sandstones at Wolstenholme 

 Sound, appears to render it probable that the E.N.E. 

 strike of the Carboniferous strata, with their overlying 

 Liassic patches, is cut off eastward, and the Silurian 

 rocks surround them in a basin-like form, an E.N.E. 

 synclinal running through Prince Patrick Island towards 

 Hayes Sound. Detailed examination of the west coast of 

 Smith Sound and Kennedy Channel will have great 

 geological interest, as it will prove whether such a 

 synclinal exists, and if so, whether the Carboniferous 

 rocks are brought in by it, and whether the lower coal- 



» •• Last of the Arctic Voy.igts by Sir E. Eelcher." (London, 1855 ) 

 t Ajpendix to " Voyage of tlis Fox" 



bearing measures are present on both sides of it, and in 

 what manner they rest on the Silurians of Grinnell Land. 

 Crinnell Land. — From the cliffs of Lady Franklin Bay 

 and from Cape Frazer, in lat. 81' 35' N., long. 70" 

 W., Dr. Hayes found thirteen species of fossils, which 

 were identified by Prof Meek as Upper Silurian species, 

 belonging to the fauna found in the New York Cats- 

 kill Shaley Limestone of the Lower Helderberg group. 

 Some of the species, as Zaphrentis Haysii, Meek, and 

 Loxonema Kanei, Aleek, are new to science.* One 

 of the most northern promontories of Grinnell Land 

 is named after the late Sir Roderick Murchison, who, 

 commenting on the collections brought from the Arctic 

 Archipelago by Parry, Franklin, Ross, Back, Austin, 

 Ommaney, and the private expeditions of Lady Frank- 

 lin, particularly those of Penny and Inglefield, and by 

 the expedition under Sir E. Belcher, endorses the re- 

 sults arrived at by Mr. Salter, that the larger number of 

 fossils obtained belong to Upper Silurian species of rather 

 an American than a European facies, though many 

 species v\ere identical with those of Wenlock, Dudley, 

 and Gothland.t Dr. Conybeare had, in his Report on 

 Geology to the British Association in 1832, already 

 noticed the similarity of the fossils from the Arctic regions 

 to those of the English Upper Silurian series. 



Dr. Emil Bessels, the naturalist of the American Polatis 

 Expedition under the late Capt. Hall, who had previously 

 taken part in the Prussian Polar Expedition, reports the 

 most northern known land on the east side of the channel, 

 including that portion of Hall's Land examined, to consist 

 of Upper Silurian rocks, with a few fossils .+ 



The Esquimaux inhabitants of the coasts of Arctic 

 America, Irom Behring's Straits to Gieenland, speak the 

 same language, and use similar implements. There is 

 no more interesting passage in Prof Dawkins' recent 

 work § than that in which he compares the identity of 

 type of these implements with those from Dordogne and 

 other parts of France and Belgium, both as regards 

 fowling and fishing spears, daits, and arrows ; this like- 

 ness extends to the actual shape of the base of insertion 

 into the haft, the halt being formed of mammoth ivory 

 derived from the frozen clitTs, of the very species that was 

 hunted by paleolithic man in the South of France. 



These two peoples, separated so widely in time and 

 space, were alike in their artistic feelings and methods of 

 incising, on tusks, antlers, and bones, representations of 

 familiar objects ; alike also in their habit of splitting bones 

 for marrow and accumulating them around their dwellings, 

 in their disregard for the sepulchre of their dead, in their 

 preparation of skins for clothing, and in the pattern of 

 the needles used in sewing them together ; alike also in 

 their feeding on the musk sheep and the reindeer, and in 

 countless other characteristics. It is well-nigh impossible 

 to resist Prof. Dawkins' conclusion that the Esquimaux is 

 the descendant of pala.'olithic man, who retreated north- 

 wards with the Arctic fauna with which he lived in 

 Europe : though before the close of the glacial epoch 

 it is probable that a continuous land connection existed 

 between France and North America by way of Siberia, 

 remains of the true horse having been discovered asso- 

 ciated with Bison prisciis and the mammoth in Arctic 

 America, and representations of the horse, by a palaeo- 

 lithic artist, occurring on an antler from La Madelaine, 

 and the entire skeleton of a horse from a palreolithic 

 station being preserved in the Lyons Museum. 



Sir John Richardson II speaks of the Kuskutch- 

 chewak people who inhabit the banks of a river flowing 



• Amctkan Journal 0/ Science and Arts, second series, vol. xl.. No. 

 ♦'■■Open Polar Sea" (London, 1867), ijp. 440. <''«4'' " Siluria," 1872. sth 



I Bull. Soc! Geog. Paris, March 1875. I have to thank Captain Feilden, 

 R.A., naturalist to the Arctic Expedition, for calling my at 

 letter of Dr. Bessels. .„ ^ , 



§ "Cave Hunting." (London: Macmill.in, r874.) 



II " Arctic Search Expedition." (London, 1851.; 



