176 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part I. 



Sir Edward Belcher discovered on the dreary shoi'es of Welling- 

 ton Channel in 75|-° N. Lat., the trunk and root of a fir- 

 tree which had evidently grown where it was found. It 

 appeared to belong to the species Ahies alba, or white fir, which 

 now reaches 68° N. Lat. and is the most northerly conifer 

 known. Similar trees, one four feet in circumference and 

 thirty feet long, were found by Lieut. Mecham in Prince Patrick's 

 Island in Lat. 76° 12' N., and other Arctic explorers have 

 found remains of trees in high latitudes which may all probably 

 be referred to the same mild period as that of the ice-preserved 

 Arctic mammalia. 



Similar indications of a recent milder climate are found in 

 Spitzbergen. Professor Nordenskjold says : ''At various places 

 on Spitzbergen, at the bottom of Lomme Bay, at Cape 

 Thordsen, in Blomstrand's strata in Advent Bay, there are 

 found large and well-developed shells of a bivalve, Mytilus 

 eclulis, which is not now found living on the coasts of Spitzbergen, 

 though on the west coast of Scandinavia it everywhere covers 

 the rocks near the sea-shore. These shells occur most plenti- 

 fully in the bed of a river which runs through Reindeer Valley 

 at Cape Thordsen. They are probably washed out of a thin 

 bed of sand at a height of about twenty or thirty feet above 

 the present sea-level, w^hich is intersected by the river. The 

 geological age of this bed cannot be very great, and it has 

 clearly been formed since the present basin of the Ice Sound, 

 or at least the greater part of it, has been hollowed out by 

 glacial action." ^ 



The Miocene Arctic flora. — One of the most startling and 

 important of the scientific discoveries of the last twenty years 

 has been that of the relics of a luxuriant Miocene flora in 

 various parts of the Arctic regions. It is a discovery that w^as 

 totally unexpected, and is even now considered by many men of 

 science to be completely unintelligible ; but it is so thoroughly 

 established, and it has such a direct and important bearing on 

 the subjects we are discussing in the present volumB, that it is 

 necessary to lay a tolerably complete outline of the facts before 

 our readers. 



1 Geological Magazine, 1876, " Geology of Spitzbergen," p. 267. 



