ATMOSPHERIC TRANSFERS. 139 
lected it at Barlow's Inlet and Point Innes, on both 
sides of Wellington Sound and in Baffin's Bay, at va- 
rious points, as liig-h as latitude 76° 15'; but in no in- 
stance, throughout this extended range, from snow un 
sullied by extraneous vegetable matter. 
This growth, however, under a modified and less 
luxuriant form, may take place upon an apparently 
unsullied and isolated surface ; for, in addition to its 
high mountain localities, as described by Saussure. 
Bier, and others. Parry found it upon the Spitzbergen 
ice-fields; and I myself, in the May of 1851, met with 
it on the floe ice of Baffin's Bay fifty miles from any 
land. • 
But I would suggest that, even in these far-removed 
situations, we can not positively assert the exemption 
of the atmosphere from organic matter. By this I do 
not mean merely effluvia, acetic and hippuric acids, 
&c., &c., as detected by Fresenius and others, but a 
direct transportation of visibly organized material. 
The highly-polished and dry surface of the Arctic 
winter-ice admits of such transportation to an almost 
indefinite extent. I have exhibited to the American 
Philosophical Society filaments of mosses sufficiently 
large to be recognized as such by the unassisted eye, 
which I collected on the ice ofi" Cape Adair in the 
month of February, 1851, some seventy odd miles from 
the shore. 
The atmospheric transfer of volcanic ash, or the still 
more remarkable infusorial [Polythalamia, etc.) dust 
on the coast of Africa, has struck me as not superior in 
interest to this difi"usion of organic sporules over the 
Arctic snows. 
To return to the " Crimson Cliffs." We found the 
red snow in greatest abundance upon a talus fronting 
