ROCK SPECIMENS. 
ccxlix 
Bay, those gathered on the coasts where Captain Parry’s discoveries com- 
menced, seem to indicate a considerable difference in the respective geolo- 
gical features of those tracts. The north coast of Barrow’s Strait, as far 
westward as the Polar Sea, and part of the eastern coast of Prince Regent’s 
Inlet, appear to exhibit a character belonging to those more recent forma- 
tions which are known to proceed from the primitive mountains of Scandi- 
navia, and other explored tracts of high northern latitudes. Among them a 
variety of limestone seems to prevail, which is very like the Alpine or 
mountain limestone. It is compact, of yellowish and greyish colour, and 
contains, among other remains of zoophytes and shells, abundance of the 
same species of Terebratula, which are characteristic of that rock in various 
alpine tracts in Europe. A greyish-brown fetid variety of limestone, from 
the north side of Barrow’s Strait, bears great resemblance to the mountain 
limestone as it occurs in Derbyshire ; it contains parts of corallines, which 
are, however, too imperfect to be determined. The chert, or hornstone, of 
which likewise specimens were found in those parts, may, perhaps, occur as 
subordinate beds in this transition limestone. Among the specimens from 
Riley Cape is a fragment of white granular marble passing into compact. 
Not less indicative of the formation to which the above-mentioned varie- 
ties of limestone belong, is a calcareous mass, which, it would seem, abounds 
in various parts of the north coast of Barrow’s Strait, on the eastern coast of 
Prince Regent’s Inlet, and which also occurs on the South coast of North 
Georgia. This limestone, which bears some resemblance to that of Goth- 
land, in which parts of the stems of Encrini are found, is yet sufficiently 
distinct from this, and all other varieties I am acquainted with, to deserve 
being briefly noticed in this place. 
It is of a yellowish white colour, and, in most hand specimens, exhibits a 
uniform coarse-granular structure ; it is friable, and the grains are indeter- 
minately angular, more or less shining, and sometimes intermixed with, or 
Cemented by, calcareous matter of a deeper yellow. Reduced to powder, it 
emits a yellow phosphorescent light when strewed on a heated iron. This 
