294 Frof. Bonney — Col. Feilden's Contributions to Glacial Geology. 



species ; two openings in a terrace, composed of a stiff yellow clay, 

 at about the same elevation, afforded in one case one genus, in the 

 other two genera. Clay and sand from a terrace 130 feet high 

 contained 7 genera, 13 species, with one specimen of an ostracod 

 and a few sponge spicules. Shell bed, belonging to the 300 feet 

 mud beds of Beluga Bay, but three miles inland, contained a great 

 profusion of forarainifera, many of them being large in size and 

 in fine preservation. They represented 15 genera and 34 species. 

 A very few echinus spines also occurred. Clay with shells from 

 the 500-foot terrace contained 10 genera and 24 species, twelve 

 being common, and half of these estimated as making up between 

 them 840 specimens, all the rest together amounting to 75. 

 Ostracods were rare, echinus spines more abundant, the specimens 

 being large. The last sample comes from Nameless Bay, west coast 

 of Novaya Zemlya proper, 250 feet elevation. In it foraminifera 

 were abundant, numbering 8 genera, 13 species. To sum up in 

 Mr. Wright's words : — " Foraminifera occui-red in all .... ; 

 in nine of them they were very rare or rare, in one of them they 

 were plentiful, in the other five they were in great profusion. 

 Sponge spicules in a somewhat fragmentary state were found in 

 nearly all of them, and ostracods and spines of echinoderms in 

 several.^ .... Nearly all the stones which occurred in the 

 clays were more or less rounded, and presented the appearance 

 of having been worn by marine action ; in a few cases they were 

 smoothed and striated, as if by the action of ice. The conditions- 

 under which these clays were deposited must have been very 

 varied, as in some of them foraminifera are abundant, whilst in 

 others they are extremely rare. When they are abundant it may 

 be inferred that the clays were laid down in quiet water or in 

 sheltered bays, and not subjected to the rapid running of currents or 

 tides ; and when they are few it may be presumed that the reverse 

 was the case." 



In this summary I have restricted myself to Colonel Feilden's 

 observations of facts, excluding inferences, except in one or two 

 cases where they express the impression produced by the general 

 aspect of a deposit, which, from an experienced observer, has almost 

 an equal value. I may, however, add that he saw no reason for 

 attributing any of the deposits on the low islands or the mainland 

 tundra to the action of a great polar ice-sheet. As Novaya Zemlya, 

 at least in the centre and north, is mountainous, the summits rising 

 to not less than 4,000 feet above sea-level, it must have always been 

 a nucleus of outflowing ice,- so that the materials of its terraces 

 cannot have made a subglacial journey uphill from the bed of the 

 sea. Such an hypothesis would be more than ever improbable in 

 the narrow strait of Matyushin Shar. 



1 A few samples of the mud of the sea-bed ivere collected and examined. They 

 were found to correspond generally with the above-named. 



2 The interior of Liitke Land at the present day is covered with ice which 

 probably forms a single sheet, ' ' similar to that enveloping Greenland, but on 

 a smaller scale." — Pearson in " Beyond Petsora," p. 150. 



