No. IV. AFPEIS'DIX. 393 



umbilic of A. 3f' Olintochi. It certainly resembles this 

 well-known ammonite very closely ; and it appears to 

 me difficult to imagine the possibility of such a fossil 

 living in a frozen, or even a temperate sea. 



The discovery of such fossils in situ, in 76° north 

 latitude, is calculated to throw considerable doubt upon 

 the theories of climate which would account for all past 

 changes of temperatiu-e by changes in the relative posi- 

 tion of land and water on the earth's surface. No 

 attempt, that I am aware of, has ever been made to 

 calculate the number of degrees of change possible in 

 consequence of changes of position of land and water ; 

 and from some incomplete calculations I have myself 

 made on the subject, I think it highly improbable that 

 such causes could have ever produced a temperature in 

 the sea at 76° north latitude which would allow of the 

 existence of ammonites, especially ammonites so like 

 those that lived at the same time in the tropical warm 

 seas of the south of England and France, at the close 

 of the Liassic, and commencement of the lower Oolitic 

 period. 



During the course of the same Arctic expedition in 

 which these organic remains were found, Captain Sir 

 Edward Belcher discovered in some loose rubble, of 

 which a cairn was built on Exmouth Island (lat. 77° 

 12' N., long. 96° W.), vertebral bones of, apparently, 

 some liassic enaliosaurian. All doubt as to the reality 

 of this discovery, and all idea of accounting for the 

 occurrence of such remains by drift, must be abandoned, 

 as the fossils found by M'Clintock were unquestionably 

 in situ, and it is impossible to evade the consequences 

 that follow to geological theory from their discovery. 



Captain Sherard Osborn, also, found broken ver- 

 tebrte of an ichthyosaurus, 3 50 feet up Eendezvous Hill, 

 the north-west extreme of Bathm-st Island : of these 

 specimens, one lay among a mass of stone that had 

 slipped from the N.W. face of the hill ; the other was 



