SABINE ON METEORIC IRON. 327 



Voyage, that the inhabitants of Norton Sound, which is in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of Behring's Straits, call the iron which 

 they procure from Russians ' shawic,' which is evidently the 

 same word. The peculiar colour of these pieces of iron, their 

 softness and freedom from rust, strengthened the probability that 

 that they were of meteoric origin, which has since been proved by 

 analysis." 



XLII. — The MiNERALOGICAL GEOLOGY of GREENLAND from 



Cape Farewell to Disko. By the Chevalier 

 Charles L. Giesecke, Professor of Mineralogy to 

 the Dublin Society. 



[Extracted from his Article ** Greenland," in Brewster's 

 '^Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," 1816.] 



[In the nomenclature of his day Giesecke here refers to the 

 highly altered or metamorphic palaeozoic (Laurentian and other) 

 strata, with their igneous rocks, as " Primitive " ; and to the more 

 distinctly bedded igneous rocks, of later data, as belonging to the 

 " Floetz-trap formation " : some old slates and trap-rock he refers 

 to Werner's intermediate " Transition formation." — Editor.] 



The accumulation of the ice having rendered the interior of 

 Greenland totally inaccessible, it can only be examined on different 

 parts of the coast ; and the promontory Cape Farewell, which is 

 its most southern point, presents to the eye immense groups of 

 precipitous mountain-masses, insulated, barren, and naked, sharp- 

 pointed at the top, greatly decomposed at the surface, and cleft by 

 the action of the snows and the ice. These rocks are intersected 

 by narrow valleys, where immense broken and scattered masses 

 are borne along by irresistible currents, and carried immediately to 

 the shores where there is no low land to intercept their course. 



1. The Granite of this island (Cape Farewell) is fine-granular, 

 consisting of pearl-white felspar, greyish-black mica, and very 

 little quartz of an ash-grey colour. The whole rock is very much 

 ironshot and disintegrated. At the foot of the granite rocks 

 occur beds of common quartz of a milk-white colour (not milk- 

 quartz), and flesh-red felspar, with small crystals of moroxite 

 (foliated or common apatite). In another place are found flesh- 

 red felspar, with little quartz, common hornblende, magnetic iron- 

 stone, and gadolinite, crystallised in longish four-sided pyramids. 

 A bed on the east side of the promontory contains garnets in a 

 fine-granular greyish-white rock, very much resembling the rock 

 of Namiest, in Moravia, called by Werner " Weiss-stein " (white 

 stone) ; but the crystals of garnet here are larger and perfect 

 dodecahedrons. The granite extends from Cape Farewell . to the 

 east and south-east of the coast, viz., over the islands of Staaten- 



