324 
TOPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
cream-coloured limestones come in. The Silurians occupy Prince Albert 
Land, the central and western portion of North Devon, and the whole of 
Cornwallis Island. The Carboniferous Limestone was discovered, rising to- 
a height of 2,000 feet, on the extreme north coast of Grinnell Land, in 
Feilden and Parry Peninsulas, and contains many species of fossils in com- 
mon with the rocks of the same age in Spitzbergen and the Parry Archi- 
pelago, being probably continuously connected with the limestone of that 
area, by way of the United States range of mountains. The coal-bearing 
beds that underlie the Carboniferous Limestones of Melville Island are 
absent in Grinnell Land, but they are represented by true marine Devonians,, 
established in the Polar area for the first time, through the determination 
of the fossils, by Mr. Etheridge. In America a vast area is covered by 
Cretaceous rocks. The lowest division, the Dakota group, contains lignite 
seams and numerous plant-remains indicating a temperate flora ; overlying 
the Cretaceous series are various Tertiary beds, each characterized by a 
special flora, the oldest containing subtropical and tropical forms, such as 
various palms of Eocene type. In the overlying Miocene beds the character 
of the plants indicates a more temperate climate, and many of the species 
occur in the Miocene beds of Disco Island, in West Greenland, and a few 
of them in beds associated with the 30-feet coal-seam discovered at Lady 
Franklin Sound by the late expedition. The warmer Eocene flora is entirely 
absent in the Arctic area, but the Dakota beds are represented by the 
'Atane strata’ of West Greenland, in which the leaves of dicotyledonous 
plants first appear. Beneath it, in Greenland, is an older series of Creta- 
ceous plant-bearing beds, indicating a somewhat warmer climate, resembling 
that experienced in Egypt and the Canary Islands at the present time. In 
the later Miocene beds of Greenland, Spitzbergen, and the newly-discovered 
beds of Lady Franklin Sound, the plants belong to climatal conditions 30° 
warmer than at present, the most northern localities marking the coldest 
conditions. The common fir ( Pinus abies ) was discovered in the Grinnell 
Land Miocene, as well as the birch, poplar, and other trees, which doubtless 
extended across the Polar area to Spitzbergen, where they also occur. 
At the present time the coasts of Grinnell Land and Greenland are 
steadily rising from the sea, beds of glacio-marine origin, with shells of the 
same species as are now living in Kennedy Channel, extending up the hill- 
sides and valley slopes to a height of 1,000 feet, and reaching a thickness of 
from 200 to 300 feet. These deposits, which have much in common with 
the 1 boulder-clays ’ of English geologists, are formed by the deposition of 
mud and sand carried down by summer torrents and discharged into fiords 
and arms of the sea, covered with stone- and gravel-laden floes, which,, 
melted by the heated and turbid waters, precipitate their freight on the mud 
below. As the land steadily rises these mud-beds are elevated above the 
sea. The coast is fringed with the ice-foot, forming a flat terrace 50 to 100 
yards in breadth, stretching from the base of the cliffs to the sea- margin- 
This wall of ice is not made up of frozen sea-water, but of the accumulated 
autumn snowfall, which, drifting to the beach, is converted into ice where 
it meets the sea-water which splashes over it. As a supplement to this 
memoir a very extensive and important paper on the fossils brought by 
Captain Feilden, was read by Mr. Etheridge, in which he remarked espe- 
