Correspondence—Captain H. W. Feilden. 91 
areas with the Upper Boulder-clay of the Lancashire plain, but was 
not certain that they were of Hessle age. The solution of the main 
question depended chiefly on the relative age of the Wolverhampton 
and Stafford clay-and-gravel, which he was disposed to regard as the 
equivalent of the lower brown Boulder-clay of the N.W. and like- 
wise of the chalky clay of Lincolnshire. He concluded by consider- 
ing facts which might be regarded as opposed to this view, and by 
giving his reasons for regarding the palzontological evidence of the 
relative age of deposits as not, in all cases, reliable. 
CORRESPONDEHINCE.. 
aie Te 
RECENT MOLLUSCA ON THE SIBERIAN TUNDRA. 
Str,—On the 14th January, 1878, Mr. Henry Seebohm read a 
paper before the Royal Geographical Society, on his visit to the 
valley of the Yenesei in 1877, and which was subsequently published 
in the Proceedings of the same Society. In his most interesting 
account of that region, the tundras are thus described. ‘The 
Siberian ‘tundra’ is something like the fjelds of Lappland, some- 
thing like a Scotch moor or an Irish bog. It is a wild undulating 
extent of country, full of rivers, lakes, and swamps, stony, but not 
rocky, gay with brilliant wild flowers, abounding with ground 
fruits, such as crowberry, cranberry, cloudberry, and Arctic straw- 
berry, and swarming with clouds of mosquitoes. The hill tops are 
barren and stony, but the valleys shelter dwarf willows and stunted . 
birch. 
“These ‘tundras’ are evidently rising gradually. Ancient drift 
wood, rotted into tinder, is often found above the present limit of the 
highest floods, and at Gol-cheek’-a (N. lat. 71° 30’ on the Yenesei), 
I found large heaps of recent sea-shells at least four miles from the 
river-bank, and 500 feet above the level of the sea.” 
Mr. Seebohm kindly permitted me to examine the specimens 
which he gathered from the position referred to, and with the aid 
of Mr. Edgar A. Smith, the following species were determined. 
Moutvusca. Peeten islandicus, Chemn. 
Astarte borealis, Chemn. 
Natica affinis, Gmelin. 
Saxicava arctica, L. 
Fusus (Neptunea) Kroyeri, Moller. 
Fusus (Neptunea) despectus, L. 
CrrrireepiA. Balanus poreatus (Da Costa). 
The recent elevation of the Siberian tundras is well known, and 
in the travels of M. de Middendorf and Von Wrangel frequent 
allusion is made to the subject. Mr. Henry H. Howorth, in a very 
interesting paper, published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical 
Society of London, 1873, has brought together and discussed an 
immense amount of information in regard to the recent elevations of 
the earth’s surface in the northern circumpolar region, in which the 
tundras of Siberia come in for due share of notice, and makes it 
unnecessary for me to do more than refer to his paper. 
