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206 
superficial observers always remark and expatiate on it ; I use the 
avokI circumpolar advisedly, for it is stated that a depression is 
taking place in South Greenland, but, with that excejjtion, all 
Gavellers agree that in Spitzbergen, along the coast line of Siberia, 
in Alaska, along the barren coast line of America, throughout the 
Parry Archipelago, in Griiinell Land and North Greenland, rapid 
and progressive elevation is now going on. In a paper that I 
ivrote last year on the Natural History of Prince Albert Land,'- I 
remarked that the junction of the coast line of America and the 
Parry Archipelago was merely a question of a short time, geologi- 
cally speaking. 
I he seeular elevation in Grinnell Land is very rapid; I 
have myself found trunks, roots, and branches of trees, lying' on 
the surface of the ground up to the height of 300 and 400 feet, 
and even higher. At that elevation, wood that I have gathered 
floated, and burnt with a smoulder, whilst that at lower elevations 
had lost neither buoyancy nor its qualities of rapid combustion. In 
the old lacustrine and fiord mud deposits, that had been elevated 
and afterwards cut through by the summer torrents, it was no 
unfiequent occurrence to see the logs of drift wood sticking out 
fiom the banks of ravines, and offering an appearance which, to 
the uninitiated in geology, has given rise to the great error that 
tins drift-wood had grown in ai/u. I should not have laid so 
much stress on this, had I not noticed that Wallace, in his most 
interesting Avork lately published (‘Island Life’), has given his 
high authority to the jiropagation of this error, and has used it as 
a pi oof of the intercalation of mild periods in the glacial eiioch in 
circumpolar regions. He writes : “ Sir Edward Pelcher discovered 
oil the dreary shores of Wellington Channel, in N. latitude, 
the trunk and root of a lir-tree, Avhich had evidently grown where 
it was found. It appeared to belong to the species Abiev alba, or 
White Eir, which now reaches 08” N. latitude, and is the most 
noitheinly conifer known. Similar trees, one four feet in circum- 
ference and thirty feet long, Avere found by Lieut. IMccham in 
I lince Patrick Island in latitude 7G“ 12'’ N., and other Arctic 
explorers have found remains of trees in high latitudes, Avhich 
may in all probability be referred to the same mild period as that 
of the ice-preserved Arctic mammalia.” 
* ‘Zoologist,’ 187.0, p. ;3. (Ejd.| 
