No. IV. APPENDIX. 391 



it was confirmed, as far as probability of such fossils 

 occurring at so high a latitude is concerned, by the 

 remarkable discovery of similar fossils by Captain 

 M'Clintock, in lat. 76° 20' N., at Point Wilkie, in 

 Prince Patrick's Island. 



In a paper, published by the Eoyal Dublin Society, 

 in the first volume of their journal, p. 223, Captain 

 M'Clintock thus describes the finding of these fossils : — 



" After returning to Cape de Bray, we took up the 

 provisions that the officer after whom it is called had 

 left for us, and crossed the strait to Point Wilkie ; 

 reached it on the 14th May. This traverse was the 

 more difficult from the great load upon our sledge, and 

 the unfavourable state of the ice and snow. The freshly 

 fallen snow was soft and deep, and beneath it the older 

 snow lay in furrows across our route, hardened and 

 polished by the Avinter gales and drifts, so that it re- 

 sembled marble. 



"On landing I found the beach low, composed of 

 mud, with the foot-prints of animals frozen in it. A 

 few hundred yards from the beach there are steep hills, 

 about 150 feet in height, and upon the sides of these, 

 in reddish-coloured limestone, casts of fossil shells 

 abound. Inland of these, the ordinary pale carbonife- 

 rous sandstone and cherty limestone reappeared. The 

 fossils are all small, and of only a few varieties, some 

 being ammonites, but the greater part bivalves. They 

 differed from any I had met with before, and the rock 

 was almost brick-red; I picked up what appeared to 

 be fossil bone (Ichthyosaurus ?), only part of it appear- 

 ing out of the fragment of the rock. 



" Point Wilkie appears to be an isolated patch of lias- 

 si c age, resting upon carboniferous sandstones and lime- 

 stones, with bands of chert, of the same age as the lime- 

 stones and sandstones of Melville Island. The eastern 

 shore of Intrepid Inlet is composed of this formation ; 

 while the western, rising into hills and terraces, is of 



