En ese E OA a ane Ee oh ee SEC a oe 
1876.] The Former Climate of the Polar Regions. 855 
that bear witness to a rich polar vegetation developed under a 
warm climate. Among these, however, we miss the species of 
large-leaved fern so abundant in the coal-beds of more southerly 
lands, a cireumstance which may possibly indicate a certain dif- 
ference of climate as existing at that epoch, unless, as is more 
_ probable, the circumstance is merely the result of the insuffi- 
ciency of the materials brought from but one single arctic local- 
ity. 
The only relics from the polar regions belonging to the suc- 
ceeding era, the Triassic, are those of marine animals, amongst 
which a considerable portion consists of large, shell-clad Cepha- 
lopoda related to Ammonites, Nautilus, ete., which, judging from 
the habits of the forms still existing in our time, could assuredly 
have only lived in a warm ocean. More certain information rela- 
tive to the nature of the polar climate at that time is afforded by 
portions of skeletons of colossal Sauria, — one form, Ichthyosaurus 
polaris, seems to have reached a length of twenty or thirty feet, 
— which, together with vast coprolite beds, are found in great 
abundance inclosed in the Triassic strata of Ice-fjord, and which 
among the now existing fauna have their nearest representatives 
in the crocodiles on the sunny banks of the Nile, or perhaps 
rather in the marine lizard, Amblyrhynchus, met with in the 
Galapagos Isles. That multitudes of these cold-blooded animals 
lived at that time in the vicinity of the eightieth degree of lati- 
tude attests beyond all doubt climatal conditions very different 
tom those of the present day. 
At the entrance of Ice-fjord and at Mount Agardh, in Stor- 
fjord, the Triassic strata are covered with marine formations be- 
longing to the immediately subsequent geological era, the J — 
Period, and, as far as we can judge from the few fossil remains 
hitherto discovered in these strata, no diminution had as yet 
taken place in the warmth of the polar climate. But great 
changes now came to pass in the portion of the polar basin north 
of Europe, the ocean being again transformed into a continent, 
which, though shattered and reduced, still exists up to the pres- 
nt time. The upper portion, therefore, of the Jura formation 
of Spitzbergen does not contain any marine organisms, but in 
the Place of them beds of sandstone and slate, with coal-seams 
impressions of plants. From the strata belonging to that 
age met with at Cape Boheman, in Ice-fjord, situated between 
the Seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth degrees of latitude, the 
edish 
Sw. 
expeditions have brought home numerous impressions of 
