‘unt 
R. I. Murchison on the Arctic Regions. 379 
stems of plants, which Lieut. Pim gathered on various points 
between Wellington Channel on the east and Banks’s Land on 
the west. Similar silicified plants were also brought home by 
Capt. M‘Clure from Banks’s Land; and, through the kindness of 
Mr. Barrow, to whom they were presented, they are now exhibi- 
ted, together with a collection made by Capt. Kellet, which he 
sent to Dr. J. E. Gray of the British Museum, who has obligingly 
lent them for comparison. 
I had requested. Dr. Hooker to examine all those specimens 
which passed through my hands, and I learn from him. that he 
will prepare a description of them, as well as of a great number 
tom the same region, which had been sent to his father, Sir W. 
Hooker, associated, like those now under consideration, with 
fragments of recent wood. : 
Of secondary formations no other evidence has been met with 
except some fossil bones of Saurians, bronght home by Sir E. 
Belcher, from the smaller islands north of Wellington Channel; 
and of these fossils Sir Edward will give a description. Of the 
old Tertiary rocks, as characterized by their organic remains, no 
distinct traces have, as far as 1am aware, been discovered ; and 
hence we may infer that the ancient submarine sediments, having 
been elevated, remained during a very long period beyond the 
influence of depository action. 
et us now see how the other facts, brought to our notice by 
the gallant Arctic explorers who have recently returned to our 
country, bear upon the relations of land and water in this Arctic 
tegion during the quasi-modern period, when the preseut species 
of trees were in existence. 
and used as fuel. Whenever this wood was in a well-preserved 
State, it was either detected in guilies or ravines, or bad probably 
been recently exhumed from the frozen soil or Ice. In such 
cases, and particularly on the northern faces of the slopes where 
the sun never acts, wood might be preserved any length of time, 
inasmuch as Capt. M‘Clure tells me he has eaten beef, which, 
though hung up in his cold larder for two years, was perfectly 
ainted. 
The most remarkable of these specimens of well-preserved 
Tecent wood is the segment of a tree, which, by Capt. M‘Clure’s 
orders, was sawn froma trunk sticking ont of a ravine, and which 
ds now exhibited.* It measures 3 feet 6 inches in circumference. 
4 h the kindness of Mr. John Barrow, to whom it had been given, this 
Wood, nth some silicified stems, has been presented to the Museum of Practi 
Thr 
Ww. 
Geology. 
