166 Foreign Literature and Science. 



mal heat be owing to nervous energy, or any way connected 

 with the nervous sys'tem, why, it may be asked, are birds so 

 much hotter than the mammaha ? why is the temperature 

 of most quadrupeds higher than that of man? Or if it be 

 owing to digestion, and secretion, and animal action, why 

 is the temperature of the amphibia and of fishes so low 

 where powers in respect to these functions are so consid- 

 erable ? 



Or if it be connected with muscular energy, why are the 

 animals whose muscular powers are most remarkable, the 

 animals belonging to all the lower classes, equally remarka- 

 ble for the lowness of their temperature ? 



Or lastly, if animal heat depend at all on peculiarities of 

 structure and organization, why, it may be asked, is not the 

 temperature of the amphibia, elevated like that of birds — 

 the structure of the respiratory, and digestive, and secreting 

 organs of one class, being so much like those of the other ? 

 — Ed. Phil. Jour. 



3. East Coast of West Greenland, formerly inhabited hy 

 Europeans. — Early history informs us that a part of the east 

 coast of West Greenland, was colonized by Norwegians from 

 Iceland. The colony appears to have been considerable, and 

 to have extended northward to Lat. 65° or 66.° Some au- 

 thors, (and particularly a writer in the Edinburgh Review,) 

 maintain, that no such colony ever existed ; on the contra- 

 ry, that the Norwegians landed and colonized the west, not 

 east coast of old Greenland. The late observations of 

 Scoresby, and the details given by Giesecke, in a memoir 

 published in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 

 demonstrate the futility of the opinion, just mentioned. Gies- 

 ecke, who spent eight years in Greenland, tells us he met 

 with upwards of fifty Norwegian houses, in the fiords or 

 firths of South and East Greenland, fragments of church 

 bells, and sculls of the Caucasian or European race of men. 

 In the language of the Greenlanders, he detected many 

 Scandinavian or Icelandic words, used in domestic life, a 

 proof that there existed a friendly intercourse between both 

 nations. Many plants foreign to this part of the Arctic 

 Flora were met with, probably imported by the Norwegian 

 settlers, such as the sorbus aucuparia. In reference to the de- 

 struction of the colonists, our author remarks ; " All the ru- 

 ins of Norwegian houses were surrounded by immense mas- 



