TRANSACTIONS 01^- THE SECTIONS, 5§ 



and 10° above that of tlie beech. Accordingly we may conclude that the firs and 

 poplars which we meet at Atauelrerdhilv and at" Bell Sound, Spitzberg-en, must have 

 reached up to the north pole, in so far forth as there was land there in the tertiary 

 period. Tlie hills of fossilized wood found by M' CI are and his companions in Banks 

 Land (lat. 74° 27' N.), are therefore discoveries which shoidd not astonish us; they 

 only confirm the evidence as to the original vegetation of the polar regions which 

 we have derived from other sources. Ihe Professor then proceeds to say that the 

 whole course of reasoning which led him to the conclusion that the mioce'ne tenipe- 

 peraturo of Greenland was oO^ F. higher than its present one, was too long to bo 

 included in a paper lilie the present one ; it would bo fully developed in his work 

 ' On the Fossil Flora of the Polar Regions,' which will contain descriptions and 

 plates of the plants discovered in North Greenland, Melville Island, Banks Land, 

 Mackenzie River, Iceland, and Spitzbergen, and which he hopes to publish at an 

 early date. 



f He then selects Sequoia Langsdorffii, the most abundant of the trees at Atanekerdluk, 

 and proceeds to investigate the conclusions as to climate deducible from the fact of 

 its existence in Greenland. Sequoia scmpervirens Lamb. (Red-wood) is its present 

 representative, and resembles it so closely that we may consider S. sempervirens to 

 be the direct descendant of S. Langsdorffii. This ti-ee is cultivated in most of the 

 botanical gardens of Europe, and its exti-eme northern limit may be placed at lat. 

 53° N. For its existence it requires a summer temperature of 60° F. Its fruit re- 

 quires a temperature of 65° F. for ripening. The winter temperature must not fall 

 below 31° F., and that of the whole 3-ear must be at least 50 F. Accordingly we 

 may consider the isothermjrl of 50° as its northern limit. This we may then take 

 as the northern temperatm-e of the Sequoia Langsdorffii, and 50° F. as the absolute 

 minimum of temperatiue under which the vegetation of Atanekerdluk could have 

 existed there. 



The present annual temperatm'e of the locality is about 20° F. Dove gives the 

 normal temperature of the latitude (70° N.) at 16° F. Thus Greenland has too high 

 a temperature ; but if we come fiu-ther to the eastward we meet with a temperature 

 of 33° F. at Altenfiord. Even this extreme variation from the normal conditions 

 of climate is 17° F. lower than that which we are obliged t^ assume as having pre- 

 vailed dming the JNliocene period. 



The author states that the results obtained confirm his conclusions as to the cli- 

 mate of Central Europe at the same epoch (couf. Hear, jRechsrches sur le Climat et la 

 Vegetation du patj& Tevtiaire,^. 193), and shows at some length how entirely insuffi- 

 cient the A-iews of Sartorius von Waltershausen are to explain the facts of the case. 



Herr Sartorius would account for the former high temperature of certain localities 

 by supposing the existence of an insular climate in each case. Such suppositions 

 would be quite inadequate to account for such extreme difterences of climate as the 

 evidence now under consideration proves to have existed. 



Professor Pleer concludes his paper as follows : — 



I think these facts are convincing, and the more so as they are not insulated, but 

 confirmed by the evidence derivable from the Miocene Flora of Iceland, Spitzbergen, 

 and Northern Canada. These conclusions, too, are only links in the grand chain of 

 evidence obtained from the examination of the Miocene Flora of the whole of 

 Europe. They prove to us that we could not by any re-arrangement of the relative 

 positions of land and water produce for the uorthem hemisphere a climate which 

 would explain the phenomena in a satisfactory manner. We must only admit that 

 we are fiice to face with a problem, whose solution in all probability must be at- 

 tempted and, we doubt not, completed by the astronomer. 



The Geological Distribution of Petroleum in North America. 



B)j Prof. C. H. HiTcncocK, M.A., of New YorTc City. 



During the past five years the United States of America have produced more than 



three hundred millions of gallons of petroleum. The average daily yield for the 



present year (1866) has been at least 12,000 barrels. The business of collecting, 



transporting, and refinipg it employs as many hands as either the coal- or iron-trade. 



