84 STEVENSON 



mentioned by Robert, as cited by von Buch, must have been 

 collected at some other locality and not in association with coal, 

 as .no coal occurs in the Carboniferous of Icefiord. 



Carboniferous rocks do exist in West Spitzbergen, and the 

 map given by Nathorst shows extensive areas of these rocks on 

 several branches of Icefiord as well as on Bell's sound and fur- 

 ther south. In 1827 Keilhau obtained Spirifer keilhavii from 

 the South cape and in 1839 the French expedition collected 

 the same spirifer with Productus gigantciis from Bell's Sound. 

 Toula in 1873 found a Carboniferous fauna in the northern por- 

 tion of Icefiord, which shows a commingling of Permian and 

 Coal Measures forms much like that existing in Nebraska and 

 West Virginia. Nathorst has described recently the Carbonif- 

 erous plants collected at several localities on Icefiord and Bell's 

 sound, referring them to the Lower Carboniferous. 



Thus far no workable coal bed has been found in this forma- 

 tion on Spitzbergen. Coaly .streaks are present at some of the 

 northern points along Icefiord but they are not beds. Last 

 year, Mr. G. A. Fangen found on Recherche bay of Bell's 

 sound, about five miles below the anchorage, a bed of excellent 

 coal, four to five inches thick and associated with a dark shale 

 showing abundant impression of plants. The outcrop is cov- 

 ered with debris and the stay at this locality was too brief to 

 admit of uncovering the coal and its plant bed. It seems to 

 be near the spot at which Professor DeGeer observed Lower 

 Carboniferous plants. The absence of workable coal in south- 

 ern Spitzbergen at the bottom of the Carboniferous is the more 

 noteworthy because coal is present on Bear island, N. Lat. 

 74° 30', which was discovered in 1684 by Bennet, who took 

 some of this coal to England. In 1827, Keilhau found four 

 coal beds in a vertical section of about 200 feet, the intervening 

 rocks being fine grained sandstone. Higher beds, unquestion- 

 ably of Coal Measures age, are here as shown by the mollusks, 

 and von Buch was inclined to place the coals in the Lower Car- 

 boniferous, which would make them equivalent to the plant 

 beds of Spitzbergen.^ Professor Nathorst, however, made 



1 Von Buch. op. cit., pp. 67, 73. 



