ON THE EASTERN PART OF THE 
ARCTIC BASALT PLATEAU. 
1. INTRODUCTION. 
In a recent memoir A. Holmes! has given an extensive petrogra- 
phical review of the basaltic rocks belonging to the Brito-Arctic 
province; he points out tnat descriptions of particular localities and 
their rocks are not lacking, and that specially the British region 
has become classic through the well known investigations by Judd, 
A. Geikie and A. Harker. He fills out the gap existing between 
other localities of the Arctic region previously described, by an in- 
vestigation, both petrographical and chemical, of a number of basaltic 
rocks chiefly from the Atlantic part of the Arctic plateau, sc. from 
West-Greenland (Hare Island), East-Greenland (Scoresby sound), 
Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Jan Mayen, Spitsbergen and Franz Joseph 
Land. The rock specimens described by Holmes were brought home 
by various expeditions at various times, but their position in space 
and time is not always strongly defined. In the classification of the 
arctic basaltic rocks on base of his investigations and on comparison 
with other recent descriptions of the same or neighbouring regions 
Holmes divides the basalts in saturated (quartziferous) ones and 
in undersaturated rocks, the latter comprising both olivine-basalts 
and nepheline-olivine-bearing rocks; the first group is repre- 
sented by all localities reviewed by this author except from Jan 
Mayen, the olivine basalt being the commonest volcanic rock of 
1 A. Holmes, The basaltic rocks of the Arctic region. Mineralogical Magazine, 
vol. XVIII, pp. 180—223 (Aug. 1918). 
