1881. ] Geography and Travels. 503 
but it should have been, it now appears, a carn erected by the 
Austrian expedition. 
In the interesting discussion which followed the reading of this 
paper, Captain Sir George Nares said, in the course of his re- 
marks: ‘From Payer’s voyage it was learned that the Arctic 
migratory sea-birds went to Franz-Josef Land earlier than to any 
known spot. The precise reason for this has not yet been ascer- 
tained, but it afforded evidence that the water in the channels 
that Payer traveled over always thawed earlier in the summer 
than in other parts of the Arctic seas very much further south. 
This must be in consequence of some very strong current pour- 
ing through the strait represented in the chart, thawing the ice. 
He could not think that this current flowed from the south; if it 
did it would carry the ice towards the land, and there could not 
possibly be such a large quantity of water there. He therefore 
reasoned that the current came from the north, causing a large 
body of water close to the land by forcing the ice south; a vessel 
bound north would meet this ice at a distance from the land, and 
would have to force her way through it.” “Mr. Markham 
has referred to the heavy icebergs that were born there. What 
became of them was not known. If his conclusion about the 
northern current was correct, this, in combination with a move+ 
ment towards the north-west of a lower stratum of warmer water, 
would carry them towards Wiche’s Land, of which nothing was 
. They were not found drifting down past Hope Island 
and Bear Island in any great quantities, and it was still uncertain 
Mr. Etheridge, F.R.S. (President of the Geological Society) 
said: “Amongst the few specimens which Mr. Leigh Smith 
and Pinus pallasiana. No other fossil plant-remains had been 
brought from that region, but he had no doubt that it was Upper 
Cretaceous, That settled the question of the existence of Cre- 
important formations in Great Britain and Russia. Beneath that 
again were older rocks still. A great deal had been done with 
regard to the groups of Palaozoic rocks in the northern regions, 
especially through Sir George Nares and Captain Fielding, who 
S€cured a fine collection of fossil Mollusca and corals. Captain 
Markham’s investigation of Novaya Zemlya had proved the exts- 
tence, in that island, of carboniferous rocks, agreeing closely with 
