Revieics — The Arctic Manual. 617 



one paper, but contains all the necessary information for procuring 

 and preserving the flowering plants, mosses, lichens, and fungi, as 

 well as the fresh and salt-water algse of the Arctic regions ; and con- 

 cludes with a reference to the excellent opportunities afforded to the 

 naturalists of the Expedition for "making observations on the power 

 of seeds to resist cold whilst retaining their vitality." Seeds of 

 various sorts, such as mustard, cress, radish, turnip, pea, bean, etc., 

 have been provided for such experiments. 



The " Instructions " close with some twenty pages of excellent 

 matter referring to practical work in geology, mineralogy, etc. The 

 names of Bauisay, Evans, Story-Maskelyne, and Judd are sufficient 

 evidence of the value and importance of this sub-division of the 

 introductory matter. The instructions and suggestions would be 

 useful to any one, and comprise not merely a list of the tools and 

 stock required for collecting and preserving, but good sketches of 

 inclined, contorted, and other strata, conformable and unconformable 

 stratification, and the like. It is unnecessary to call attention to 

 these suggestions in detail, as they are numerous and terse, and to 

 make an abstract of them would be impossible. Special attention 

 is, however, called to the want of information on the Oolitic fauna, 

 similar to that of Cook's Inlet discovered by McClintock in lat. 60°, 

 and the Liassic fauna found both by Sir Edward Belcher and the 

 Swedish Expedition in 78° 30 / , and also whether a true Carbon- 

 iferous flora occurs in any continental land or island, resembling 

 that found in Bear Island. The examination geologically of the 

 northern realms has hitherto been so very partial and incomplete, 

 that a connected geological history is at present impossible. All 

 that is really known is that a Miocene flora has been collected at 

 Atanekerdluk and other places on the Waigat, at Disco, and Spitz- 

 bergen, and that many great sheets of basaltic lava overlie the rocks 

 containing the Miocene plants in many places. As the Miocene 

 igneous rocks of the Earoes and Inner Hebrides occur in much the 

 same way, and the true determination of the position of similar de- 

 posits would not only throw " much light on the change of climate, 

 but also on- the subject of a great continental extension of land 

 during the Miocene Epoch into far northern regions, as suggested by 

 Dr. Bobert Brown." 



There is an interesting subject for research, too, in the character 

 of the Greenland glaciers, namely, that the underlying rocks are not 

 grooved or striated (as far as we at present know), like the rocks 

 which have been acted upon by old or modern glaciers in the 

 Alps and elsewhere. This apparently arises from the fact that the 

 whole of Greenland has been entirely covered by the glacier-ice, so 

 that no moraine matter from exposed cliffs or peaks could get be- 

 tween the ice-sheet and the underlying rocks, and act as agents for 

 scoring or scratching the surface over which they were moved under 

 great pressure. It is asserted, therefore, that the rocks are " ice- 

 polished or ' inoutonnee,' but not grooved or scratched ; " and it would 

 be instructive to have accurate data on this point, so as to increase 

 our knowledge of the action of glacier-ice under the exceptional 

 conditions that obtain in Greenland. 



