THE ARCTIC EXPEDITION : ITS SCIENTIFIC AIMS. 
159 
also Gyprind islandica , but Littorina littorea does not. Heer 
notices these circumstances in his paper Die Miocens Flora und 
Fauna Spitzbergens (Kongl. Svenska Yet. Akad. Forhand. 
Band 8, No. 7, p. 23). It would be worth while, I think, for 
the naturalists attached to the Arctic expedition to examine 
any raised beaches they may come across, with a view to dis- 
cover whether the facts bear on the conclusions drawn by 
Swedish geologists, for it is difficult to believe that a consider- 
able change of climate could take place in Spitzbergen without 
also leaving traces in North Greenland.” All these questions 
are of deep philosophical interest. There is another not less 
interesting. The vegetation of Greenland now-a-days is meagre 
enough — no tree, no shrub higher than the knee, and then only 
in favoured places. But just towards the close of the cretaceous 
period, and during the miocene age, a luxurious flora of ever- 
green trees and shrubs, oaks, magnolias, chestnuts, cypresses, red 
woods ( Sequoia ), ebony, &c., flourished in Spitzbergen, Green- 
land, the Mackenzie Biver, and Alaska — in fact forming a cir- 
cumpolar belt of rich vegetation, some of the specTes of which 
also stretched far to the south. The Southern States of America 
or California affords a vegetation which may be compared with 
this tertiary flora of the Arctic regions. In West Greenland at 
the present time it is only found in the vicinity of Disco Bay 
and the Waigat Strait, not stretching beyond 71°, where it is 
conjoined with beds of coal, and broken through by trap dykes. 
No doubt its range was at one time much more extensive, and 
has been circumscribed by the soft strata being destroyed by 
disintegration and the wearing action of the ice ; for we can- 
not believe that a flora so extensive in its range could have been 
limited in Greenland to such a small area. Most likely it at 
one time stretched right across Greenland, before the country 
got overlain by ice. It would be interesting to find patches of 
it in the regions geologically unexplored further in the North. 
The whole geology of such a region would be extremely inter- 
esting. Most likely other formations than what we know of in 
West Greenland will be found in the North. In East Green- 
land, for instance, liassic beds, unknown on the west coast, 
have been discovered on Kuhn Island, and there is a probability 
that other mesozoic beds — perhaps the true carboniferous strata 
of Melville Island — may be discovered dotting one or other, or 
both shores of Smith’s Sound, or the Strait, the entrance to 
which bears that name. 
Some people ask, “ What is the good of this expedition ? ” The 
plain English of such a question is, I suppose, how much money 
is to be made out of it ? Well, we may at once answer that 
the Alert and Discovery expedition is not a joint stock company, 
of which Captain Nares is chairman, and that there will be no 
