86 REPORT— 1869. 



and there was little likeliliood that it ended there ; only it had not heen ohserved 

 fiu'ther, no civilized men having passed a sufficiently long time in Smith's Somid, 

 or elsewhere north of Danish Greenland, to ohtain accm-ate data. Hence Drs. 

 Kane and Hayes, observing certain terraces near their winter-quarters, concluded 

 that the coast was there rising, and for want of further information, their opinions 

 have been tolerably extensively adopted, even though they were in direct contra- 

 diction of the long-continued and well-established obsei-vation made to the south- 

 ward of their point of observation. 



The author explained these ten-aces by supposing that there had been a rise, 

 though there is now a fall going on. These terraces, or their counterparts, are seen 

 all along the C4reenland coast, and were fuUy described from his observations made 

 in 1861 and 1867. The interval between Hayes's and Kane's winter-quarters has 

 been so little examined, either by the geographer or the geologist, that little could 

 be said about it, but south wai'd of 73^ N. lat., this raised portion of the sea-bottom 

 is seen at intervals. The hills (as described in the author's ' Florula Discoana'*) are 

 in general low and rounded, and everywhere scattered with perched blocks and 

 boulders, many of them brought from more southern and northern latitudes. 

 These angular blocks are very different from the rounded and worn boulders which 

 have been subjected to the gToovong action of superincumbent ice. They bear the 

 impress of having been dropped on the former sea-bottom by icebergs, which had 

 borne them downward fi-om the moraines of old glaciers. In other localities, in. 

 the hollows or along the sea-shore, we see several feet of the glacial clays (the 

 counterpart, in fact, of the "brick-clays " of some parts of Great Britain) full of 

 Arctic sheUs, Crustacea, Echinodermata, &c., such as are now living in the neigh- 

 bouring sea, while in other places the clay is bare of organic remains. In this 

 glacial clay of Greenland (which the author considered the counterpai't of the 

 upper laminated boulder-claj's of Great Britain and the North of Europe) all the 

 shells 8ic. are recent species, living in the Greenland sea to this A&y, with two 

 exceptions. These are Glycimeris siliqun and Tanopaa Norvegica'\ ; but as both of 

 these are found in the Newfoundland sea, we inay expect them yet to be shown to 

 be living in Davis Strait. This " fossiliferous clay " has been found up to the 

 height of more than 500 feet above the sea, on the banks overhanging glaciers, 

 where frequently the old shells are deposited on the glacier among the moraine, 

 and carried out by icebergs, by which they are again deposited on the sea-bottom, 

 thus completing a second revolution of change. In some portions of this olay, in 

 knots, the author found impressions of the Angmaksak of the Eskimo, the Capelin 

 of Newfoundland {3IaUotm arcfiais, 0. Fab.), which was doubtless the tish refen-ed 

 to by Professor Louis Agassiz, when he speaks of knowing only one fossil fish as 

 perfectly identical with living species, " a Mallotus, which is found in nodules 

 of clay of unknotcn age in Greenland." iVmong other instances given as evidences 

 of a former elevation was cited the fact of two huts, or their remains, being found 

 on an island high above the sea, in places where no Greenlander woidd ever fix his 

 habitation. He also heard of a lake in which there was said (on excellent autho- 

 rity) to be marine shells naturalized. The author of this paper therefore concluded 

 that there (1) had been a foi-mer rise of the land, and (2) that at the present 

 time the coast is gi-adually sinking. Thus we see in Greenland two appearances : 

 1st, in the interior mer civ f/Iace, what Scotland once ^vas during the glacial epoch ; 

 2nd, on the coast what Scotland now is, as far as her glacial clays and other 

 remains are concerned. 



On Reptilian Eggs from Secondary Strata. 

 By "William Carkutheks, F.L.S. 



On " Slickensides." By William Caektttkees, F.L.S. 



* Transactions of the Botanical Society of Edinbm-gh, vol. ix. p. 430. 

 t Morch in Kinks, Grdnlancl, Bind ii.Tilliog, p. 14o. 



