380 R. I. Murchison on the Arctic Regions. 
Still more interesting is the cone of one of these fir-trees which 
he brought home, and which apparently belongs to an Abies 
resembling A. alba, a plant still living within the Arctic’ circle. 
ne of Lieut. Pim’s specimens of wood from Prince Patrick’s 
Island is of the same character as that just mentioned, and in its 
microscopical characters much resembles Pinus strobus, the 
American Pine, according to Prof. Quekett, who refers another 
specimen, bronght from Hecla and Gripper Bay, to the Larch. 
In like manner Lieut. Pim detected similar fragments of wood 
two degrees farther to the north, in Prince Patrick’s Land, and 
also in ravines of the interior of that island, where, as he informed 
me, a fragment was found like the tree described by M‘Clure, 
sticking out of the soil on the side of a gully. 
-We learn, indeed, from Parry’s ‘ Voyage,’ that portions of a 
large fir-tree were found ut some distance from the south shore of 
Melville Island, at about 30 feet above high-water mark, in lati- 
tude 74° 59’ and longitude 106°.* According to the testimony 
of Capt. M‘Clure and Lieut. Pim, all the timber they saw re- 
sembled the present drift-wood so well known to Arctic explorers, 
being irregularly distributed, and in a fragmentary condition, as 
if it had been broken up and floated to its present positions by 
water. If such were the method by which the timber was 
distributed, geologists can readily account for its present position 
in the interior of the Arctic Islands. They infer that at the period 
of such distribution large portions of these tracts were beueat 
the waters, and that the trees and cones were drifted from the 
nearest lands on which they grew. A subsequent elevation, by 
which these islands assumed their present configuration, woul 
really be in perfect harmony with those great changes of relative 
level which we know to have occurred in the British Isles, Ger- 
portions of it which happened to have been exposed to the alter- 
* “Serjeant Martin of the Artillery and Capt. Sabine’s servant brought down to 
the several. pieces of a large fir-tree, which they found: nearly buried in the 
sand at the distance 2 of 300 or 400 yards rt cB i r mark, and not 
less than 30 feet above the the sea.”—Parry’s Voyage for the Discovery 
