Correspondence — Mr. T. Mellard Reade. 379 



One of the most marked cbaracteristics of some of these boulders 

 was their containing large gai-nets, similar to those in a rock found 

 in the neighbourhood of Fiskernas, in South Greenland. It is 

 perfectly correct that some of the boulders I met with in Grinnell 

 Land were of garnetiferous gneiss, and the difi'erence between them 

 and the blue Silurian limestone or dark Azoic slate, the rock in situ, 

 on which they were lying, could hardly fail to attract attention. 

 From Lady Franklin Bay, on the west side of Robeson Channel, 

 as far north as Cape Joseph Henry, I did not meet with this 

 garnetiferous gneiss as a rock of the country. It does not occur as 

 such in Hall Land, neither do I think it can be found in situ along 

 the lands visited by Aldrich in his journey along the north shore of 

 Grant Land, nor on the northern shores of Greenland traversed by 

 Beaumont, Lockwood, Brainard, Peary, and Astrup, for this rock is 

 of such a striking character that such intelligent observers as I have 

 mentioned could not well have passed over it without remarking its 

 garnetiferous structure. There was a fine example of an ice-rounded 

 boulder of this remarkable rock lying stranded a little above high- 

 water line, not far from the "Alert's" winter quarters, in 82° 27' N. 

 Fortunately I brought away with me fragments of this boulder, 

 which are now in the British Museum ; I am informed that the 

 fragment is a "coarse-grained aggregate of large garnets, orthoclase, 

 cordierite, fibrolite, and quartz, with a little biotite. A peculiar 

 feature of the rock is the enclosure of rounded quartz ci-ystals in 

 the felspar. It is probably a garnetiferous cordierite-fibrolite gneiss, 

 but the fragment is too small to show the foliation." 



The conclusion I arrive at is, that this erratic boulder and its 

 fellows, scattered over the shores of Grinnell Land and North 

 Greenland, cannot by any possibility have been derived from Soiitli 

 Greenland, and floated up througli Davis Strait, Baffins Bay, Smith 

 Sound, and Robeson Channel, to the Polar Sea. Such a supposition 

 is as much at variance with fact, as to cast a bladder into the sea at 

 Cape Clear, and assure us that it reached the West Indies; and I cannot 

 understand how a man of Bessels' ability could formulate such a 

 theory. It is far more reasonable to presume that these erratics 

 are derived from some land within the unknown region of the Polar 

 area. If so, the land that produces them must support glaciers, 

 for these ice-worn boulders have passed through the mill of a 

 glacier, to give them their present shape and wear. There can be 

 little doubt that the drift-wood stranded on the shores of the Polar 

 Ocean, along the coast of Grinnell Land, is derived from the great 

 rivers of Siberia, and the same drift and current that transports 

 it is equally capable of drifting ice-borne erratics from unknown 

 Polar lands. H. \V. Feilden, Colonel R.A. 



"West House, Wells, Norfolk. 



EXPANSION THEOEY OP MOUNTAIN EVOLUTION. 

 Sir,— Mr. Davison, in a " Second Note on the Expansion Theory 

 of Mountain Evolution," quoting Prof. Le Conte, restates what 

 he thinks to be a fundamental objection to the expansion theory. 



