15^ Notice of Captain Parry’s Voyage (^Discovery. 
were collected. It is reported, that the skeleton of an immense 
whale was found some miles from the sea-shore. The Yocks in 
the island appear to be partly primitive, partly secondary, and 
in various places there were considerable alluvial formations. 
The primitive rocks were red granite, sometimes passing into 
gneiss : gneiss, some varieties of which contained red garnets 
and minute crystals, apparently of hyacinth : milk-quartz, with 
intermixed grains of red felspar ; and hornblende rock, with 
coarse serpentine, were observed in different quarters. On the 
shores of Liddon’s Gulph the red granite was found to abound 
with pistacite. Of the secondary rocks the most frequent was 
grey sandstone, which we were told was the most abundant 
rock in the island. It is principally composed of quartz, with 
fine scales of mica, and sometimes contains portions of brown- 
coal, and ironstone, and also vegetable impressions. In one spe- 
cimen the impression was of a species of the fossil genus, Le- 
pidodendron of Sternberg, Palmacites of Schlotheim *, and is one 
of those tropical looking trees of the palm tribe, frequently met ^ 
with in our coal-fields. From this fact, and others already men- 
tioned, it appears that the rock^s of the new discovered lands 
contain, and not unfrequently, fossil remains of genera of ani- 
mals and vegetables, that now no longer occur in a living 
state, but in the warmer parts of the temperate zones, or in 
the tropical regions. Along with the sandstone were found 
masses of brown-coal, containing mineral pitch ; and we were 
informed that compact grey limestone, generally containing in- 
termixed calcareous spar, was very abundant. 
From the few specimens of the mineral productions of the 
newly discovered lands we have had an opportunity of see- 
ing, and the accounts we received, it appears, that, in their 
nature and arrangement, they do not differ from those met 
with in the old world, thus shewing, that primitive and secon- ' 
dary rocks in all great tracts of country, have every where 
the same general characters and arrangement. The hills in 
Melville Island are not very high, and we understand that, 
* Versuch einer Geognostisch-botanischer Darstellung der Flora der Vdrwelt, 
von Grafen Kaspar Sternberg. Leipzig 1820 — Die Petrefactenkunde auf ihren 
jetzigen Standpunkte, von Baron von Schlotheim. Gotha, 1820. 
