188 



ISLAND LIFE 



PART I 



most part filled with ice, the sides of the mountains in 

 summer, even in the 80th degree of latitude, and to a height 

 of 1,000 or 1,500 feet above the level of the sea, are almost 

 wholly free from snow. Nor are the rocks covered with 

 any amount of vegetation worth mentioning ; and, moreover, 

 the sides of the mountains on the shore itself frequently 

 present perpendicular sections, which everywhere expose 

 their bare surfaces to the investigator. The knowledge of 

 a mountain's geognostic character, at which one, in the 

 more southerly countries, can only arrive after long and 

 laborious researches, removal of soil and the like, is here 

 gained almost at the first glance ; and as we have never 

 seen in Spitzbergen nor in Greenland, in these sections 

 often many miles in length, and including one may say all 

 formations from the Silurian to the Tertiary, any boulders 

 even as large as a child's head, there is not the smallest 

 probability that strata of any considerable extent, contain- 

 ing boulders, are to be found in the polar tracts previous to 

 the middle of the Tertiary period. Since, then, both an 

 examination of the geognostic condition, and an investiga- 

 tion of the fossil flora and fauna of the polar lands, show 

 no signs of a glacial era having existed in those parts before 

 the termination of the Miocene period, we are fully jus- 

 tified in rejecting, on the evidence of actual observation, 

 the hypotheses founded on purely theoretical speculations, 

 which assume the many times repeated alternation of warm 

 and glacial climates between the present time and the 

 earliest geological ages." ^ And again, in his Sketch of the 

 Geology of Spitzhergen, after describing the various forma- 

 tions down to the Miocene, he says : " All the fossils found 

 in the foregoing strata show that Spitzbergen, during former 

 geological ages, enjoyed a magnificent climate, which 

 indeed was somewhat colder during the Miocene period, 

 but was still favourable for an extraordinarily abundant 

 vegetation, much more luxuriant than that which now 

 occurs even in the southern part of Scandinavia : and I 

 have in these strata sought in vain for any sign, that, as 

 some geologists have of late endeavoured to render probable, 

 these favourable climatic conditions have been broken off 

 ^ Geological Magazine, 1875, p. 531. 



