30 
Haughton about the subfossil shells found by Dr. Walker at Port Kennedy can 
hardly refer to such singlé specimens, but to similar occurrences as I have myself 
seen in many places in Ellestnereland. Whole layers of clay where full of shells 
of Mya truncata, Saxicava rugosa, and many other species, Saxicava sometimes still 
in its hole in a stone. The fragments of Balanus-^h%\\s also speak against M'Millan's 
interpretation, as they will hardly be carried away by birds, and finally in several 
instances even subfossil Lithothamnia were associated with the shells. Now I have, 
indeed, never seen such deposits at a height of 500 feet, as has Dr. Walker, but 
I cannot see any cause for doubting that they occur actually at such an altitude 
in North Somerset. M' Millan makes no comment about the statement that Cyprina 
islandica should occur among those subfossil species. It is not, however, found 
living in the Polar Sea, except in a few cases at the coast of Danish Greenland. 
In Spitzbergen it is found in raised beaches as a witness of a warmer postglacial 
period, and if Haughton'8 identification is right, its occurrence in the Arctic Islands 
would be very interesting. It is found hving in the Bering Sea, but there its 
occurrence may be due to preglacial causes, likewise as is the case with a number 
of algae, as I have pointed out some years ago (Relations of floras). With this I 
think I can leave the geology for the present. 
About the climate of the Arctic Archipelago there is not much to be said. It 
is, of course, different to a certain degree within such a vast area, but the diffe- 
rences are comparatively small. The most prominent and important factor I take 
its extreme dryness to be. In southern Baffin Land indeed the amount of yearly 
precipitation reaches nearly 300 mm but in Ellesmereland it hardly comes above 
100 mm, and, as far as 1 can make out of the very incomplete measurements of 
most expeditions, a similar poor amount of precipitation is found generally in the 
western islands. This accounts, of course, for the small range of glaciation at the 
present lime, perhaps we may also take the absence of marks of former icesheets 
as a proof that the same conditions have prevailed there when the Glacial Period 
covered the adjacent parts of the Continent with an immense inland ice. 8ome 
comparatively small areas of present glaciation indeed exist, such as in the east 
coast of Baffin Land, the coast of Ellesmereland along the »North Water» and along 
the Kennedy and Robson Channels, the southwestern corner of that land, with the 
island of N. Kent and the nearest part of N. Devon, and lastly parts of the shores 
of Heureka and Nanseu Sounds. All these local fields of glaciation are connected 
with the existence of open water during a considerable part of the year. So for 
instance the open water at the western end of Jones Sound, first observed by 
Belcher in the early spring of 1853, is now known to exist there every year. For 
my part at least I do not doubt that it acts as a local feeder of precipitation and 
thus accounts for the appearance of glaciers in that neighbourhood. 
