558 H. W. FEILDEN AND C. E. DE KA.NCE ON 



Franklin-Pierce Bay, and is separated from " the mainland by a 

 fault. It is composed of a grey argillaceous limestone, splitting 

 easily from the action of the weather. The dip is to the north at a 

 high angle, as the island on its southern faces rises as a steep bluff 

 from the sea, some 600 feet, shelving to the water on its northern 

 side. The summit is marked with glacial scratchings running in a 

 north and south direction. Yeins of calcite or carbonate of lime 

 traverse the rock of this island in several places. Fossil organisms 

 are not numerous, but those obtained exhibited a decidedly Silurian 

 facies*. The basement conglomerate is not seen on Norman- 

 Lockyer Island, but is brought up by an east and west fault to the 

 north of it, and reappears at Cape Prescott, where it is overlain by 

 limestones similar to that of Victoria Head. Both conglomerate and 

 limestones continued exposed in the cliffs of Allman and Dobbin 

 Bays, Cape Louis Napoleon, and Hayes Point. An anticlinal axis 

 ranges north-east through Cape Hilyard, along which more ancient 

 Silurians appear to be exposed, as Mr. Etheridge has determined 

 some of the fossils from this locality, and others in the neighbour- 

 hood, to belong to Lower Silurian types, as Maclurea magna, Be- 

 ceptaculites occidentalism It. arctica. The Silurian limestones continue 

 to Cape Norton Shaw ; and at Cape Barrow, as well as in the loca- 

 lities previously described, a very numerous assemblage of fossils 

 has been obtained, including the genera Orthoceras, Strophomena, 

 Rhynchonella, Macrocheilus, Favosites, and Halysites. These rocks 

 are not found on the northern side of Scoresby Bay, where they 

 give place to a more ancient formation of probably Huronian age ; 

 the line of junction is not seen, and it is doubtful whether the two 

 formations are faulted against each other, or whether the Silurians 

 are deposited on the older strata. 



The boundary, of whatever character it may be, traverses Kennedy 

 Channel, and reappears in Hall Land, traversing the country from 

 Polaris Bay to the southern end of Newman Bay, its situation being 

 determined within narrow limits by the occurrence of Cape-Rawson 

 beds at Thank-God Harbour to the north, and of Silurian lime- 

 stones at Cape Tyson and Offley Island to the south, whence the 

 limestones extend to both sides of Petermann Fiord and Bessel's 

 Bay, and southward by way of Franklin and Crozier Islands, Capes 

 Constitution and Andrew Jackson to the great Humboldt glacier, 

 and they doubtless underlie the whole of the ice-cap covering 

 "Washington Land. 



Above these Silurians lie the coal-bearing sandstones of Melville 

 Island and Banks Land, occupying a synclinal and overlain by the 

 Mountain Limestone. 



From the identity of many of the species of plants found in the 

 shales associated with the coals with those of the rocks lying at the 

 base of the Spitzbergen and Bear-Island Mountain Limestone, Prof. 

 Heer has referred this group to his " Ursa stage," which he con- 

 siders to be of Lower Carboniferous age. 



* Amongst them may be noted Favhtetta reticulata. 



