iO 



PO^IPEGKJ. JURASSIC FAUNA OF CAPE FLORA. [norw. pol. exp. 



bottom of our fjords, or the clay used iu our brick manufactories, but less 

 pure, being more sandy. Whether this soft consistency is the real one 

 prevailing all through the strata, or only exists near the surface, where it is 

 caused by moisture, frost, thaw and weathering, I cannot say decisively. But 

 down to whatever depth we were able to dig, I found the same softness, 

 only that everywhere the strata were frozen from a short distance below the 

 surface, which made digging more difficult. In one place, in the bank near 

 shore, just south of Elmwood, Kosttlitz tried for a long time to dig very 

 deep by suspending his work at intervals, during which he alloM^ed the sun 

 to thaw the freshly exposed frozen strata. Here, however, he found nothing 

 but soft clayey sand, containing some few pebbles, and interstratified with 

 thin, black, bituminous or carboniferous, sandy strata. 



Where I had an opportunity of examining the clay deposits more closely, 

 I found, as a rule, numerous concretionary nodules of hard stone embedded in 

 them. These nodules had generally a rounded lentoid or spheroidal shape, 

 and varied in size fi-om some two feet in diameter to very small ones. They 

 were, as a rule, ferruginous, and having been exposed a little to weathering, 

 they had a yellow-brown or rust-brown crust. Pompeckj has divided these 

 hard stone-nodules into 7 types, according to the material of which they are 

 composed. (See his description, chap. II). 



Upon looking at a view of Gape Flora, it may seem strange that the 

 heavy weight of the 150 m. thick basalt cap does not squeeze the soft clay 

 beds underneath out to all sides, and that the basalt does not thus sink down 

 to sea-level. This would probably also happen to some extent, if the tempe- 

 rature in the interior of the clay-beds were to rise above freezing-point. 

 They would then no longer be able to form such steep talus slopes (of 

 3-3° — 40'') as they do at present, and would slowly ooze out under the weight 

 of the masses above. By being frozen all through they have acquired the 

 consistency of hard rock. This condition, however, would be very essentially 

 altered if the climate of Franz Josef Land were to become a more genial 

 one than it is at present; and the shape and height of Cape Flora hill might 

 then, with comparative suddenness, be entirely altered. 



The Jurassic strata underlying the basalt at Cape Flora are very rich 

 in fossils. These are somtimes lying free, embedded in the soft clay, but are 

 more generally enclosed in the hard argillaceous stone nodules. 



