Reviews — The Arctic Manual. Ill 



beds of volcanic sand, which in time, by pressure, have assumed a 

 crystalline character." They rest directly upon the gneiss, except on 

 the coast of Omenakfjord, Noursoak, and Disco, where they overlie 

 the sands and clays above referred to. 



" It is possible this same formation may continue under the sea to 

 Iceland, and thence, partly in a more northerly direction, by Jan 

 Mayen to Spitzbergen, partly in a southern direction from Jan Mayen, 

 by the Faroe Islands, to the Hebrides and Iceland, as between the 

 Greenland and British Basalt formations there seems to be, both in 

 age and character, considerable agreement." 



Some remarkable facts have still to be referred to, viz. : the 

 existence of quantities of wood, capable of being used for fuel, and 

 whale-bones also, at high levels at many places, in gullies and ravines 

 and on hill-sides ; and the enormous masses of meteoric iron which 

 have also been discovered. The wood was believed by Sir Eoderick 

 Murchison to be drift-wood, though the tree trunks from which the 

 portions examined were sawn were many feet above the sea-level. 

 The existence of whale-bones at a distance above the sea-level has been 

 often noticed. Their presence may arise from two causes, — either 

 upheaval of the land, or being placed as land-marks. In Spitzbergen 

 the number of bones lying together, belonging apparently to the 

 same skeleton, and the '' carcases and bones of whales at 80 or 500 

 feet elevation," would seem to indicate a gradual rising of the land ; 

 but " in some cases vertebrae and skulls of whales have been set up 

 as landmarks," and these must not be confounded with the remains 

 drifted or left by retiring waters. The occurrence of a single skull 

 or bone, more especially on high or noticeable land, should rather 

 be assigned to the former cause than the latter. 



The meteorites of Ovifak, one of which, now in the Hall of the 

 Eoyal Academy at Stockholm, weighed 19 tons, another at Copen- 

 hagen 9 tons, and tbe third in the British Museum 195 lbs., were 

 discovered on the beach. They were strongly magnetic, and the 

 iron extremely crystalline and brittle ; but here and there "on their 

 surface, in the iron nearest the surface, pieces of basalt or fragments 

 of a crust of basalt " were clearly visible, and this corresponded with 

 the material of the neighbouring rock. About 15 undoubted speci- 

 mens were in all discovered by the Expedition of 1870. 



In another locality, too, iron which Dr. Wollaston determined to be 

 of meteoric origin has been found. At Cape York, in Baffin's Bay, 

 the natives, as stated by Capt. Ross in 1819, had been accustomed 

 to use the metal for the edges of their knives, separating it from 

 the mass by a hard stone, and then beating it into small flat oval 

 pieces. "' The place where the metal was found was called Sowal> 

 lick, and was about 25 miles inland (Lat. 76° IW N. ; Long 54° W.)." 



But there is yet another discovery of considerable interest in con- 

 nexion with these regions. " Greenland is the only place in the 

 world in which the mineral Cryolite (valuable as a material whence 

 aluminium can be obtained) has hitherto been found" (Tayler). 

 At Evigtok, on the shores of West Greenland, the widest seam 

 is 80 feet across ; and the matrix (gneiss) is further enriched 



DECADE II. VOL. III.— NO. IV. 12 



