152 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 15, 



I saw both whales' bones and drift-wood at least thirty feet, and I 

 think as much as forty feet, above high-water mark. Geologists 

 can form their own deductions from this ; but I may mention that 

 the seal-fishers all believe the land to be rising, or, as they generally 

 express it, " the sea is going back." 



Whales used to be formerly very abundant around the shores and 

 bays of Spitzbergen, but of late years the true whale (Mysticetus) is 

 unknown within many miles of Spitzbergen. Macculloch and other 

 commercial writers attribute this to the persecution they have under- 

 gone ; but the seal- and walrus-fishers all say that "the seas have 

 got too shallow for them." This may also arise partly from the 

 enormous quantities of mud and debris brought down by the nume- 

 rous rivulets running from the steep slopes of the mountains. Some 

 of these rivulets have immense deltas of semifluid mud at their 

 mouths. 



The Thousand Islands are an immense cluster of low rocky islands 

 lying off the sonth-east corner of Spitzbergen, and consist entirely 

 (at least, as far as I could observe) of a coarse granular trap. They 

 are mostly very low, and with very little soil on their surfaces. 

 T observed the skeletons of whales upon some of them at such a 

 height that it was quite impossible they could have been washed 

 there with the rocks at their existing level ; and this seems to me 

 to afford conclusive evidence that Spitzbergen and the adjacent 

 islands are emerging from the deep at a rate even more rapid than 

 that at which the coasts of some parts of Norway have been clearly 

 demonstrated by distinguished geological writers to be rising. 



2. On the Formation of Gypsums and Dolomites. 

 By T. Sterry Hunt, Esq., of the Geological Survey of Cauada. 



(Communicated by Professor Ramsay, F.E.S., F.G.S.) 



The deposits of gypsum in nature may be divided into two classes. 

 One of these comprises the gypsums formed by the alteration of beds 

 of limestone. The vapours of solfataras, the sulphuric acid produced 

 by the slow oxidation of moist sulphuretted hydrogen gas (as shown 

 by Dumas), and springs containing free sulphuric acid are the agents 

 which have changed and are still changing carbonate into sulphate 

 of lime. Such springs, containing from l0 3 0o to 1 4 u 6 ths of free sul- 

 phuric acid (evolved probably from the reaction between sulphate of 

 lime and siliceous matters under the influence of heat at considerable 

 depths), are frequent in Western Canada ; and their effects in giving 

 rise to masses of gypsum in the quaternary clays of that region I 

 have long since pointed out (Rep. Geol. Survey of Canada, 1848, 

 p. 155). 



The gypsums of the second class, which are the more frequent, 

 are met with interstratified with marls, dolomites, and rock-salt, 

 with which they are evidently contemporaneous. Eeserving for 



