Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/42

 that Mytilus is occasionally seen attached to algæ in these regions, but such rare birds are but poor representatives of the banks of the same shell which are met with in the same island. Mr. Nathorst, of the Swedish Geological Survey, tells me that in 1870 he examined these shell-banks, and found one made up of Mytilus resting upon a scratched rock-surface (now far removed from any glacier), and the scratches ran parallel with the fjord. The Mytilus still lives in Greenland, as does also Cyprinà islandica, but Littorina littorea does not. Heer notices these circumstances in his paper 'Die Miocens Flora und Fauna Spitzbergens' {Kongl. Svenska Vet. 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 discover whether the facts bear on the conclusions drawn by Swedish geologists, for it is difficult to believe that a considerable 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 nowadays 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 evergreen trees and shrubs, oaks, magnolias, chestnuts, cypresses, red woods, (Sequoia), ebony, etc., flourished in Spitzbergen, Greenland, the Mackenzie River, and Alaska — in fact forming a circumpolar belt of rich vegetation, some of the species of which also stretched far to the south. The Southern States of America or California afford 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 cannot 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 interesting. Most likely other formations than what we know of in West Greenland will be found in the North. In East Greenland, 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 dividends in the form of pelf to the shareholders, viz., the English taxpayers. There will, however, be a richer reward than any money can give, in the advancement of knowledge, the stimulus it will afford to enterprise, the training of our seamen for future work, and the glory which will attach to the English naval name from the gallant deeds which are sure to be done in the far North by the officers and men attached to it. But still, if the expedition was to discover a vein of cryolite — a mineral only found in one spot in Greenland, and of such value that sometimes twelve or thirteen ships will load with it during the summer — in a locality sufficiently accessible, there are plenty of merchants in the city of London who would gladly pay the costs of the expedition for the privilege of working it. In zoology we must not expect too much. The researches of the expedition will be made in a very high northern latitude, where animal life is scarce. Perhaps the very scarcity of it makes the species which live there more interesting. The extreme northern range of animal or vegetable life is always valuable to know; and accordingly every specimen, more especially of the land fauna, will be an important acquisition to science. The sea even, in high northern latitudes, often swarms with the lower forms of life, particularly on banks, and there the zoologist might reap a rich harvest with the dredge. The sea is often thick with the most beautiful forms of acalephæ, none of which can be preserved in a 