196 LYELL AND TORELL ON LIFE IN ARCTIC SEAS. 



sliips, and a survey was made of the coast of Spitzbergen and the 

 adjoining seas. 



" So far from finding any scarcity of Mollusca, these explorers 

 collected no less than 150 living species, chiefly on the west and 

 north coasts of Spitzbergen, in lat 79° and 80° N., and the number 

 of individuals, as well as the variety of species, was often great, 

 especially where the bottom consisted of fine mud derived from 

 moraines of glaciers, and from the grinding action of the land-ice 

 on the rocks below. 



" Between Spitzbergen and the north of Norway, but nearer the 

 former country, Dr. Torell and his fellow-labourer Mr. Chydenius 

 obtained, at the enormous depths of 1,000 and 1,500 fathoms 

 (September 1861), Mollusca (a Dentalium and Bulla or Cylichna)^ 

 a Crustacean, Polythalamian Shells, a Coral three inches long, 

 with several red Actinias attached to it, and a few Annelids. 

 These occurred to the west of Beeren's Island, in latitude 

 76° 17' N., and longitude 13° 53' E., in a sea where floating ice is 

 common for ten months in the year. The temperature of the mud 

 at the bottom was between 32° and 33° Fahrenheit, and that of 

 the water at the surface 41°, and of the air 33° Fahrenheit. 



" In Greenland, north of Disco Island, between latitude 70° and 

 71° N., in a deep channel of the sea, separating the peninsula of 

 Noursoak from the island of Omenak, a region where the largest 

 icebergs come down into Baffin's Bay, Dr. Torell dredged up, 

 besides more than twenty other Mollusks, Terebratella Spitz- 

 hergensis^ living at a depth of 250 fathoms. This shell I found 

 fossil in 1835, at Uddevalla, in the ancient glacial beds, far south 

 of its present range. The bottom of the sea in the Omenak channel 

 consisted of impalpable mud, and on the surface of some of the 

 floating bergs was similar mud, on which they who trod sank 

 knee-deep ; also numerous blocks of granitic and other rocks of all 

 sizes, most of them striated on one, two or more sides. Here, 

 therefore, a deposit must be going on of mud containing marine 

 shells, with intermingled glaciated pebbles and boulders. 



"A species of Nucula {Leda truncata or Yoldia truncata, 

 Brown), now living in the seas of Spitzbergen, North Greenland, 

 and Wellington Channel, Parry Islands, was found by Dr. Torell 

 to be one of the most characteristic species in the mud of those 

 icy regions. Of old, in the Glacial Period, the same shell ranged 

 much farther south than at present, being found embedded in the 

 Boulder-clay in the south of Norway and Sweden as well as of 

 Scotland. It has been observed by the Rev. Thomas Brown, 

 together with several other exclusively Arctic species, at Elie, in 

 the south of Fife, in glacial clay, at the level of highwater-mark. 

 I have myself collected it in a fossil state in the glacial clay of 

 Portland and other localities in Maine in North America. It is the 

 shell well known as Leda Portlandica of Hitchcock. 



" In ponds and lakes in ' the outskirts ' of North Greenland, in 

 Disco Island for example, no freshwater Mollusca were met with 

 by Dr. Torell, though vsome species of Crustacea of the genera 

 Ajpus and Branchipus inhabit such waters. This may help us to 



