Prof. NordensMbld — Former Climate of Polar Pet/ions. 527 



The sand and slate beds here mentioned do not contain any marine 

 petrifactions, whence we may conclude that they have been formed 

 in lakes or other hollows in an extensive polar continent. In Beeren 

 Island and Spitzbergen they are, however, covered by beds of lime- 

 stone and siliceous rock, which form the chief material in Beeren 

 Island, and of several considerable mountains on the southern side of 

 Hinloopen Strait, and the innermost bays of Ice-fjord in Spitzbergen. 

 The manner in which these mountains rise several thousand feet 

 above the surrounding snow desert, their regular form, crowned 

 with vast masses of dark volcanic rock divided into vertical columns, 

 the siliceous strata forming perpendicularly-scarped terraces, and 

 the tendency of the calcareous beds to fall away and form natural 

 arches, give to these mountains the appearance of ruins of colossal 

 ancient fortifications and temples, unequalled in sublime and deso- 

 late magnificence. Here, indeed, we meet with the monumental 

 gravestone of a long-past age. The rock is in fact formed almost 

 entirely of shells of marine mollusca, fragments of Corals and Bryozoa 

 of the age of the Mountain-limestone. We have then here not only 

 a proof that the ancient polar continent sank down again and gave 

 place to a deep polar ocean, but also, in the correspondence of the 

 corals, shells, and other associated organic remains, with those met 

 with in more southerly tracts, an indication that the warm polar 

 climate remained unchanged. 



The Mountain-limestone period was followed by an era during 

 which the richest coal-beds of England, Belgium, and America were 

 formed, and which has accordingly received the name of the Coal 

 period. A new distribution of land and water had now taken place, 

 continents had again arisen in the polar tracts, in the sandstones and 

 argillaceous strata of which we again find, at Bell-sound, on the western 

 coast of Spitzbergen, fossil plants that bear witness to a rich polar 

 vegetation developed under a warm climate. Among these, however, 

 we miss the species of large-leaved fern so abundant in the coal-beds of 

 more southerly lands, a circumstance which may possibly indicate a 

 certain difference of climate as existing at that epoch, unless, as is 

 more probable, the circumstance is merely the result of the insufii- 

 ciencjr of the materials brought from but one single arctic locality. 



The only relics from the polar regions belonging to the succeeding 

 era, the Triassic, are those of marine animals, amongst which a 

 considerable portion consists of large shell-clad Cephalopoda re- 

 lated to Ammonites, Nautilus, etc., which, judging from the habits 

 of the forms still existing in our time, could assuredly only live 

 in a warm ocean. More certain information relative to the nature 

 of the polar climate at that time is afforded by portions of skeletons 

 of colossal Sauria — one form, Ichthyosaurus polaris, seems to have 

 reached a length of 20 or 30 feet — which, together with vast 

 coprolite beds, are found in great abundance inclosed in the Triassic 

 strata of Ice-fjord, and which among the now existing fauna have 

 their nearest representatives in the crocodiles on the sunny banks 

 of the Nile, or perhaps rather in the marine lizard Amhlyrhynclius 

 met with in the Galapagos Isles. That multitudes of these cold- 



