308 Sir H. H. Howorth—On the Arctic Lands. 
formation of the present time, or on the nature of the animals and 
plants that lived in the vicinity of the Pole during the Pliocene and 
the European Glacial periods. We did not there meet with any 
deposits that might be regarded as a link between the Tertiary 
strata at Bel Sound and the present age.... Torell and Malmgren 
found on the shores of Hinloopen Sound and Blomstrand, in an 
especially interesting layer of earth on the shores of Advent Bay, 
shells of Mytilus edulis, which occurs abundantly along the Scandi- 
navian coasts, but no longer inhabits Spitzbergen; at least, the 
zoologists of the Spitzbergen expeditions were not able to obtain 
a single living specimen of it in the dredgings undertaken by several 
boats almost every day during three summers in the Bays and along 
the coasts of Spitzbergen. Immense numbers of this shell still 
inhabit the shallows and banks laid bare by the tide at Tromsé and 
Hammerfest (Sketch of the Geology of Spitzbergen, pp. 52 and 53). 
This assuredly points to the climate having become more, and not 
less, severe since these shells were deposited. 
Nordenskiold says further, ‘we may assume from many circum- 
stances that the layers with Mytilus at Spitzbergen are a great deal 
younger than the glacial beds of Scandinavia; so that these northern 
tracts would have been comparatively free from ice during this Huropean 
Glacial Epoch”’ (id. p. 53). 
It seems to me, again, that we cannot account for the fauna and 
flora of Spitzbergen on any other theory than that we have already 
applied to Iceland and Greenland, namely, that it marks the shrunken 
relics of what was once richer. 
Again, Nordenskiold points to many circumstances proving that 
the glaciers in Spitzbergen have, during the last few centuries, not 
retreated but advanced considerably, as for instance, at Horn Sound. 
That sound was apparently well known to the Dutch, as an old chart 
marks two anchorages there. They describe the sound as stretching 
one of its arms, containing two islands, somewhat northward; but 
at present this arm is occupied by an immense glacier, and excepting 
some small rocks there are no islands to be found in the bay. A 
similar case was noticed by M. Robert at one of the arms of Recherche 
Bay (Bel Sound), and most likely analogous circumstances very much 
changed the shape of Stor Fjord, the bottom of which is occupied by 
an extensive and low glacier stretching in an even slope as far as 
Mount Chydenius. The large islands which, according to old charts, 
were situated at the inner extremity of the bay, cannot be the same 
small islets that are now to be found there; and it seems more probable 
that Mount Gotland, now encompassed by glaciers, and some other 
neighbouring mountains, similarly shut up by ice, were at the time 
the whalers visited them surrounded by water, and identical with 
those islands which on the old charts are called Sea Horse Island 
and Seal Island. At Bel Sound I myself witnessed a most striking 
proof of glaciers, thus descending upon tracts hitherto free from ice. 
On the north coast of Bel Sound, directly to the east of the large 
island which separates Van Mijens Bay from the main bay, there 
existed only a few years ago one of the best harbours in Spitzbergen. 
The whalers, on their way from the north coast to Stor Fjord, used 
