cessary conditions. Again,
Sir Edward Belcher discovered on the dreary shores of Wellington Channel in
75-1/2deg 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 68deg 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. 76deg 12' N., and other Arctic explorers have found remains of trees
in high latitudes.[15]

Similar indications of a recent milder climate are found in Spitzbergen.
Professor Nordenskjoeld 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 coast of Spitzbergen, though
on the west coast of Scandinavia it everywhere covers the rocks near the
sea-shore. These shells occur most plentifully in the bed of a river which
runs through Reindeer Valley at Cape Thordsen. They {72} 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."[16]

_The Miocene Arctic Flora._--One of the most startling and important of the
scientific discoveries of the last forty 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.

The Miocene flora of temperate Europe was very like that of Eastern Asia,
Japan, and the warmer part of Eastern North America of the present day. It
is very richly represented in Switzerland by well preserved fossil remains,
and after a close comparison with the flora of other countries Professor
Heer concludes that the Swiss Lower Miocene flora indicates a climate
corresponding t