198 THE FOREST LANDS OF NORTHERN RUSSIA. 
matters not what that country may be. Nothing has 
escaped the penetrating eye of M. Nordenskjoeld; he has 
found and collected thousands of specimens of fossil plants, 
of coals of jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, and even of recent 
production, in a desolate archipelago, which is altogether 
devoid of roads, of means of transport, of means of access 
to places, and almost of the possibility of living.’ 
Like the greater part of the lands in the extreme 
north, Spitzbergen is deeply cut up; it bristles with ice- 
peaks, whence the name has been given. Besides the 
principal land, which has an outline whereby that it forms 
two peninsulas named respectively Eastern Spitzbergen 
and Western Spitzbergen, two other lands are associated 
with the first of these peninsulas; the first of these is 
North-East Land, separated from Eastern Spitzbergen by 
Hinlopen Straits; the other, Wiche’s Land, situated to 
the south; while separated from this by Olga Straits, and 
from Spitzbergen by Stoer Fiord, is Edge Island. The 
entire archipelago extends over at least four degrees, from 
Cape South to the Seven Isles, almost touching the 81sto 
of latitude, : 
‘The explorations, for which we are indebted to M. Nor- 
denskjoeld and the Swedish expeditions, have had prin- 
cipally for their object the western coast. Along this 
coast, slashed with immense bays and deep fiords, there is 
no lack of fossil plants belonging to all the formations 
which have been specified; and from an examination of 
these there are obtained indications of those remote lands 
having formerly been continuous with Nova Zembla and 
Northern Russia, if not with a vast continent stretching 
from the Pole to the Equator and beyond it, and compris-. 
ing the lands of America as well as those of Europe and 
Asia, and, it may be, Africa besides. The indications 
referred to are these :— 
‘As the terrestrial floras belonging to each of the for- 
mations which have been named, when observed at syn- 
chronic points, far remote from one another, manifest 
