Abstract
LONDON
Geological Society, November 7.—Prof. P. Martin Duncan, F.R.S., president, in the chair.—Stephenson Clarke, William Hunter, and the Rev. W. Roberts, were elected Fellows of the Society. The following communications were read: A letter dated September 14 was read, from Lord Derby, stating that his lordship had received a despatch from her Majesty's Minister at Tehran, reporting that a mining engineer had arrived there from Berlin, who, at the request of the Persian government, had been selected by Messrs. Siemens to ascertain what foundation there was for the reported existence of a rich vein of gold in the vicinity of Zengan; that he had visited the locality and reported that auriferous quartz does exist, but that he had not yet succeeded in finding any vein or deposit of the metal.—Notes on fossil plants discovered in Grinnell Land by Capt. H. W. Feilden, Naturalist to the English North Polar Expedition, by Prof. Oswald Heer, F. M. G. S. Near Discovery Harbour, where H.M.S. Discovery wintered in 1875-6, in about 81° 45′N. lat., and 64° 45′ W. long., a bed of lignite, from twenty-five to thirty feet thick, was found, resting unconformably upon the azoic schists of which Grinnell Land chiefly consists. The lignite was overlain by black shales and sandstones, the former containing many remains of plants; and above these there were, here and there, beds of fine mud and glacial drift, containing shells of marine mollusca of species now living in the adjacent sea. This glacial marine deposit occurs up to levels of 1,000 feet, indicating a depression and subsequent elevation of the region to at least this extent. Remains of twenty-five species of plants were collected by Capt. Feilden, and eighteen of these are known from miocene deposits of the Arctic zone. The deposit is therefore no doubt miocene. It has seventeen species in common with Spitzbergen (78° 79′ N. lat.), and eight species in common with Greenland (70° 71′ N. lat.). With the miocene flora of Europe it has six species in common; with that of America (Alaska and Canada) four; with that of Asia (Sachalin) four also. The species found include two species of Equisetum, ten Coniferæ, Phragmites œningensis, Carex noursoakensis, and eight dicotyledons, namely, Populus arctica, Betula prisca, and Brongniarti, Coryrus macquarrii and insignis, Ulmus borealis, Viburnum nordenskiöldi, and Nymphœa arctica. Of the Conifers, Torellia rigida, previously known only by a few fragments from Spitzbergen, is very abundant, and its remains show it to have been allied to the Jurassic genera Phœnicopsis and Bœiera, the former in its turn related to the carboniferous Cordaites, and among recent conifers, to Podocarpus. Other conifers are, Thuites ehrenswärdi (?), Taxodium distichum miocenum (with male flowers), Pinus feildeniana (a new species allied to P. strolbus), Pinuspolaris, Plabies (twigs covered with leaves), a species of Tsuga Pinus dicksoniana, Heer.), and a white spruce of the group of Pinus grandis and cariocarpa. Pinus abies, which occurs here and in Spitzbergen, did not exist in Europe in miocene times, but had its original home in the extreme north, and thence extended southwards; it is met with in the Norfolk forest-bed, and in the interglacial lignites of Switzerland. Its present northern limit is 691/2N., and it spreads over 25° of latitude. Taxodium distichum, on the contrary, spread in miocene times from Central Italy to 82° N. latitude, whilst at present it is confined to a small area. Betula brongniarti, Ett., is the only European species from Grinnell Land not previously known from the arctic zone. The thick lignite bed of Grinnell Land indicates a large peatmoss, probably containing a lake in which the water-lilies grew; on its muddy shores stood the large reeds and sedges, the birches, poplars, Taxodia, and Torelliœ. The drier spots and neighbouring chains of hills were probably occupied by the pines and firs, associated with elms and hazel bushes. A single elytron of a beetle (Corabites feildenianus) is at present the sole evidence of the existence of animals in this forest region. The nature of the flora revealed by Capt. Feilden's discoveries seems to confirm and extend earlier results. It approaches much more closely to that of Spitzbergen than to that of Greenland, as might be expected from the relative positions of the localities; and the difference is the same in kind as that already indicated by Prof. Heer between Spitzbergen and Greenland, and would indicate the same kind of climatic difference. Nevertheless, the presence of Taxodium distichum excludes arctic conditions, and that of the water-lily indicates the existence of fresh-water, which must have remained open a great part of the year. Representatives of plants now living exclusively in the arctic zone are wanting in the Grinnell Land deposits; but, on the other hand, most of the genera still extend into that zone, although they range in Grinnell Land from 12° to 15° further north than at present. —On our present knowledge of the invertebrate fauna of the lower carboniferous or calciferous sandstone series of the Edinburgh neighbourhood, especially of that division known as the Wardie Shales, and on the first appearance of certain species in the beds, by Mr. R. Etheridge, jun., F.G.S.
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Societies and Academies . Nature 17, 115–116 (1877). https://doi.org/10.1038/017115a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017115a0