King — Preliminary Notice of a Memoir on Bocli-joinfing. 331 



currents, with, a temperature slightly more elevated than that of the 

 gulf-stream where it now strikes the west coast of Ireland, to bathe 

 the coasts of its islands. Climatal amenities now prevail in Northern 

 Scandinavia, the Kara Sea, and the Taimyr peninsula of Asiatic 

 Eussia : the last place, the most northern continental land of the 

 globe, now supports an exuberant forest vegetation in a much higher 

 parallel than anywhere else within the Arctic circle, and only about 

 16° short of the jS^orth Pole : while the fact is evidently due to the 

 presence of warm water carried by ocean currents, and by rivers (as 

 the Yeneissi) from the south. jSTorthern Siberia, in direct communi- 

 cation with southern lakes and ocean streams, charged with warm 

 water, and. in the condition of an archipelago ; — why may not its great 

 forest belt be extended up to Spitzbergen and Franz Joseph Land — to 

 parallels corresponding with those in Grinnell Land, which formerly 

 supported the growth of a vegetation approximately similar in some 

 respects to that now characteristic of Northern Italy and the Southern 

 States of jSTorth America ? 



As to the long winter-night of darkness, and the long summer-day 

 of sunlight, he is satisfied from adducible evidences, that, other things 

 being favourable, such conditions would rather favour than impede 

 vegetable growth. 



The memoir concludes with remarks on igneous disturbances. Ad- 

 mitting the existence of a number which may be included in the 

 equatorial system of jointing, it is stated that disturbances of the kind 

 are for the most part limited to certain of the meridional zones of weak- 

 ness. As is well known, a most important series of volcanoes charac- 

 terises the west coasts of the two Americas, and a similar series lies 

 oil the east coast of Asia; belonging, in the author's opinion, one to 

 the west-of -north, and the other to the east-of-north section: both 

 series become united in Behring Sea. Other writers, by connecting 

 the equatorial series of volcanoes north of Australia with the 

 above two, have constructed a "circle of fire," but, according to 

 the present writer, with far too limited a range. He contends that 

 the two meridional series (by pursuing a direct course, so as to 

 embrace the Cocos Island, St. Paul's, Kerguelan's Land, Enderby's 

 Land, thence curving to Trinity Land, passing on to the South 

 Shetlands, and through Puejia into the Patagonian Andes), form 

 but one — a great volcanic girdle ; which may be said to stretch 

 without interruption around the world, traversing the Arctic regions 

 a few degrees east of the North Pole, and intersecting the Antarctic 

 circle at a corresponding distance west of the South Pole ; thus divid- 

 ing the crust of the globe along its greatest zones of weakness into 

 two nearly equal halves. 



As to reflections which may naturally arise in connexion with the 

 last subject, it may be remarked that the writer is, scientifically, too 

 much of a teleoptomist, too extravagant a timist, and too little of 

 a catastrophist, to entertain any involving serious or disquieting ap- 

 prehensions. 



