314 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



hundred feet above the sea. I brought home many specimens, which are no-w- 

 in the museum of the Geological Society. Could an approximation to the age 

 of these bones be in any way arrived at, they would give some chronological 

 data for determining the time which the land whereon they are found has been 

 in emerging from the sea and attaining its present level. My own impression, 

 for many reasons, is that the whole of Spitzbergen has been gradually rising 

 within the last few hundred years, and that this upheaval is still continuing. 

 It is, perhaps, impossible to judge of the length of time which such enormous 

 bones may endure in a climate like this, where they are bound up in ice for 

 eight or nine months out of the twelve ; but allowing, at a guess, four hundred 

 years for bones lying at an elevation of forty feet (which is about the highest 

 at which I have found entire skeletons), and adding twelve feet of water for 

 the whale to have floated in when he died there, we shall arrive at thirteen feet 

 per century as the rate of elevation. Erom the position of the eleven jaw- 

 bones, &c, which I have just mentioned, and from the fact of so many lying 

 together in a slight hollow, I am inclined to believe that these are the remains 

 of whales killed by men, and that they were towed into this hollow (then a 

 shallow bay) for the purpose of being flensed there. We learn from the 

 accounts of the early whale-fishers that their usual practice was to flense their 

 whales in the bays ; and, in fact, that the whales were so abundant close to the 

 shore that the ships did not require to leave their anchorage in the bays at all. 

 It was about the year 1650 that the whale-fishery in the bays of Spitzbergen 

 was in its prime ; thus, supposing these whales to have been killed in that bay 

 two hundred years ago, allowing three fathoms (the very minimum) for the 

 ship to have anchored in, and adding the ten feet which the bones are now 

 above the sea-level, we have twenty-eight feet of elevation in two hundred 

 years, or very nearly the same rate as I arrived at by the other example." 

 (Page 200, et seg.) 



With regard to the disappearance of the whale (Mysticetus) from the shores 

 of Spitzbergen, Mr. Lamont remarks : " I believe the principal reason to be 

 that the seas around Spitzbergen have become too shallow for them : this is 

 the general belief of the sealers frequenting the coast, only they generally c put 

 the cart before the horse,' by saying that the 'sea is going back.' I have 

 heard the same remark made by the sailors and fishermen on the west coast of 

 Norway, where Sir Charles Lyell (' Principles of Geology,' p. 506) has shown 

 to demonstration that the coast-line is rising at the rate of four feet per cen- 

 tury. On this island I observed a further most interesting proof of its elevation. 

 This was a sort of trench or furrow of about a hundred yards long, three or 

 four feet deep, and about four feet broad, which was ploughed up amongst the 

 boulders ; it was about twenty feet above the sea-level, and extended from 

 north-east to south-west, being exactly the line in which the current-borne ice 

 travels at the present day ; so that I presume there is no doubt it must have 

 been caused by the passage of a heavy ice-berg while the island lay under 

 water." Thus far has M. Lamont contributed information towards the eluci- 

 dation of the problems connected with the recent upheaval of the European 

 area — a subject of high interest now-a-days, especially in connection with the 

 question of the relative antiquity of the stone implements of human manufac- 

 ture found in caves and gravel above the present sea-level. 



The southern half of Spitzbergen appears to consist chiefly of Carboniferous 

 rocks (Coal-measures (?) and Mountain-limestone), of which M. Lamont brought 

 numerous characteristic specimens to England (now in the museum of the 

 Geological Society) ; and, from a comparison of his observations with the col- 

 It ction of rocks made in the southern part of Spizbergen by Parry and Eoster, 

 in 1S27, it would appear that the trap-rocks, sandstones, shales, arid limestones 

 pf the south are represented in the north by marble and compact limestone, 



