176 
ISLAND LIFE, 
[rART I. 
Sir Edward Belcher discovered on the dreary shores of Welling- 
ton Channel in 75^° N. Lat., the trunk and root of a fir- 
tree which had evidently grown where it was found. It 
appeared to belong to the species Abies alba , or white fir, which 
now reaches 68° N. Lat. and is the most northerly conifer 
known. Similar trees, one four feet in circumference and 
thirty feet long, were found by Lieut. Mecham in Prince Patrick’s 
Island in Lat. 76° 12' N., and other Arctic explorers have 
found remains of trees in high latitudes which may all probably 
be referred to the same mild period as that of the ice-preserved 
Arctic mammalia. 
Similar indications of a recent milder climate are found in 
Spitzbergen. Professor Nordenskjold says : “At various places 
on Spitzbergen, at the bottom of Lomme Bay, at Cape 
Thordsen, in Blomstrand’s strata in Advent Bay, there are 
found large and well-developed shells of a bivalve, Mytilus 
edulis, which is not now found living on the coasts of Spitzbergen, 
though on the west coast of Scandinavia it everywhere covers 
the rocks near the sea-shore. These shells occur most plenti- 
fully in the bed of a river which runs through Reindeer Valley 
at Cape Thordsen. They are probably washed out of a thin 
bed of sand at a height of about twenty or thirty feet above 
the present sea-level, which is intersected by the river. The 
geological age of this bed cannot be very great, and it has 
clearly been formed since the present basin of the Ice Sound, 
or at least the greater part of it, has been hollowed out by 
glacial action.” 1 
The Miocene Arctic flora . — One of the most startling and 
important of the scientific discoveries of the last twenty years 
has been that of the relics of a luxuriant Miocene flora in 
various parts of the Arctic regions. It is a discovery that was 
totally unexpected, and is even now considered by many men of 
science to be completely unintelligible ; but it is so thoroughly 
established, and it has such a direct and important bearing on 
the subjects we are discussing in the present volume, that it is 
necessary to lay a tolerably complete outline of the facts before 
our readers. 
1 Geological Magazine, 1876, “ Geology of Spitzbergen,” p. 267. 
