age as the coal-bearing Jurassics of Brora, Skye, and Mull (Scotland), and the Middle Dogger of Yorkshire. There is also coal on Kuhn Island.
(6.) Cretaceous.—Beds of this age, consisting of sandstones and coal, are found on the northern coast of Disco Island, and the southern side of the Noursoak Peninsula, the beds in the former locality, “the Kome strata” of Nordenskjöld, being the oldest. They reach 1000 feet in thickness, occupying undulating hollows in the underlying gneiss, and dip towards the Noursoak Peninsula at 20°, when the overlying Atanakerdluk strata come in. Both these series contain numerous plant remains, evergreen oaks, magnolias, aralias, &c., and seams of lignite (coal), which is burnt; but in neither occur the marine beds of the United States. Still, the presence of dicotyledonous leaves, such as Magnolia alternans, in the Atanakerdluk strata, proves their close alliance with the Dakota series of the United States. The underlying Kome beds are not present in the American series. They are characterized by fine cycads (Zamites arcticus, and Glossozamites Hoheneggeri), which also occur in the Urgonian strata of Wernsdorff.
(7.) Miocene.—This formation, one of the most widely spread in polar lands, though the most local in Greenland, is also the best known feature in its geology. It is limited to Disco Island, and perhaps to a small part of the Noursoak Peninsula, and the neighbouring country, and consists of numerous thin beds of sand stone, shale, and coal,—the sideritic shale containing immense quantities of leaves, stems, fruit, &c. , as well as some insects, and the coal pieces of retinite. The study of these plant and insect remains shows that forests containing a vegetation very similar to that of California and the southern United States, in some instances even the species of trees being all but identical, flourished in 70° N. lat. during geological periods comparatively recent. These beds, as well as the Cretaceous series, from which they are as yet only imperfectly distinguished, are associated with sheets of basalt, which penetrate them in great dykes, and in some places, owing to the wearing away of the softer sedimentary rocks, stand out in long walls running across the beds. These Miocene strata have not been found further north on the Greenland shore than the region mentioned; but in Lady Franklin Bay, on the Grinnell Land side of Smith Sound, they again appear, so that the chances are they will be found on the opposite coast, though doubtless the great disintegration Greenland has undergone and is undergoing has destroyed many of the softer beds of fossiliferous rocks. On the east coast, more particularly in Hochstetter Foreland, the Miocene beds again appear, and we may add that there are traces of them even on the west coast, between Sonntag Bay and Foulke Fjord, at the entrance to Smith Sound. It thus appears that since early Tertiary times there has been a great change in the climate of Greenland.
(8.) Post-Tertiary Beds.—These consist of raised sea-beaches found along the whole coast of Greenland, containing Mollusca and other organic remains, identical with those living in the neighbouring sea. These terraces are very marked on the shores of Smith Sound, and are believed to be proof of the gradual elevation of the land in that quarter, such elevation being known to be going on all round the polar basin. Within the Danish possessions, however, the coast is falling,—places, the site of hamlets within the memory of man, being no longer habitable, and other localities which, when the Danes first came to the country a century and a half ago, were bare being now covered at the lowest tides.
Mines.—In addition to the formations named, there are numerous other rocks primitive or metamorphic which it is impossible to classify accurately, in which are found numerous minerals, either in veins or scattered. Few of these are of economic importance. Graphite is found in great abundance, particularly on an island off Upernivik, but the mining of it has proved unprofitable. Cryolite is found in quantity in Greenland only, and is at present the only mineral mined there for the European and American markets (see Cryolite). It is found only in one spot, Ivigtut, on the shore of Arsut Fjord in 61° 10′ N. lat., traversing a granitic-like gneiss in veins, associated with argentiferous lead, copper, zinc, tin, tantalite, molybdenite, zircon, fluor spar, &c.; but none of the metallic ores have been found profitable to work. The number of labourers employed usually amounts to 100 in summer and 30 in winter, in addition to the officials and their families. In the nine years succeeding 1857, when a licence was granted to a private company to work the cryolite, 14,000 tons were exported, and during the next nine years 70,000 tons, or, on an average, 26 ship-loads per annum. Steatite or soap-stone has been long used by the natives for the manufacture of their lamps and other vessels. Native iron is found in various places; the most remarkable of these finds were the great nodules of Uvifak on Disco Island,—the weight of the largest of which was calculated at 46,200 ℔,—at one time believed to be areolites, but now known to be simply native iron of the same quality as that scattered in the gneiss on which the masses were found superimposed. Copper has been found in several places, but only in nodules and laminæ of very limited extent. Coal of poor quality, associated with the Cretaceous and Miocene beds, is found in the districts about Disco Bay and Umenak Fjord, but it is only mined to the extent of 40 or 50 tons per annum, for use in the houses of the Danish officers, unless when an exploring ship refills with it. The coal of Kuhn island is Jurassic.[1]
Climate.—The southern part has a climate much the same as the northern shores of Norway and Iceland; further north the temperature decreases with the increase of latitude, while the severity of the winter season is intensified by the country being shrouded for several months in the year in darkness,—in the far north seldom even relieved by the rare displays of the aurora, though the starlight and moonlight are brilliant beyond what the inhabitants of lower latitudes are accustomed to. Again, during the summer there is an equally long continuance of the sun above the horizon. Spring and autumn are disagreeable, rain, sleet, and snow being frequent, while, the sea not being frozen over, travelling becomes difficult. In North Greenland sledging along the ice-covered coast is pleasant during the winter, but in the south the sea is not continuously congealed; hence no dogs are kept, and the winter exercise of the sometimes scurvied residents is confined to within a few yards of the houses, when the great depth of snow will admit even of this. The climate is very uncertain—the weather changing suddenly from bright sunshine, with swarms of mosquitos enjoying their brief holiday, to dense fog, driving in clouds around the headlands, and even heavy falls of snow accompanied by icy cold winds. At Juliaueliaab the mean annual temperature is about 33° Fahr., and at Upernivik, 13°. In January, at Van Kensselaer harbour, Kane experienced as low a temperature as -66.5° Fahr. At Sabine Island, on the east coast, the temperature is much the same at the same periods as on the opposite west coast, except in the month of December. Again, at Upernivik the mean temperature of the three summer months is 38°; at Julianehaab it is 48°; and for the three winter months respectively -7° and 20°. The winter at Julianehaab is not much colder than that of Norway and Sweden in the same latitude, but its mean temperature for the whole year is like that of Norway 600 miles further north. In other words, its winter is not severe but its summer is arctic, and, so far as the summer goes, the same generalization may be made regarding all Greenland. In the most northern settlements a temperature of 52° is oppressive, but until the thermometer falls to -28° no one complains of extreme cold. At Upernivik (72° 48′ N. lat.) the highest temperature that has been noted is 59°. At Julianehaab 68° has once been recorded, perhaps the highest known Greenland heat. Often in January and February a peculiar warm wind or “föhn” begins to blow, raising the temperature to 42°. On the other hand, at Upernivik, in July a day was observed with a mean temperature below 32°, and a single observation in the same month has shown 27½° Fahr. The prevailing winds—the “föhn,”[2] which blows from points between true E.S.E. and true E.N.E., excepted—follow the direction of the coast, “blowing from the south with snow and rain, and from the north clearing the sky, or in summer frequently accompanied by mist.” Mirage, parhelia, paraselenæ, anthelia, and auroral displays are common. There is less snow in the north than in the south. At Julianehaab it once snowed in June continuously for thirty-six hours, and in 64° N. lat. not a single drop of rain fell from September 27, 1862, to May 20, 1863, on which day the snow had obtained a depth between the houses of from 8 to 20 feet.[3] The temperature of the soil at Godthaab, 4 feet under the ground, only varied between the extremes 31.5 in March and 40.1 Fahr. in September (Rink).
Animals and Plants.—The flora and fauna are essentially European, notwithstanding the proximity of the country to America. This fact renders it probable that Davis Strait and Baffin's Bay are gulfs of old date, and points to the likelihood of East Greenland having been connected with Europe in a comparatively recent geological period. Possibly the islands between Norway and Greenland are remains of this land-bridge, over which the Lapland plants and animals found their way to Greenland. With one notable exception—the musk ox—the plants and animals of the east coast are more European than those of the west, though this consists rather in the absence of European animals and plants on the
- ↑ Analyses in Heer's Flora Fossilis Arctica, vol. i. p. 5, and Brown, Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgow, vol. v. p. 43. See also Moss, Proc. Roy. Dub. Soc., 1877, and Feilden and Rance, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1878, p. 563; Appendix to Koldeway, Zweite deutsche Nordpolarfahrt, vol. ii. p. 510; K. J. V. Steenstrup, Viddenskab. Medd. fra den naturhistoriske Forening i Kjöbenhavn, 1874, p. 77, and 1875, p. 284; Rink, Om den geog. Beskaffenhed af de danske Handelsdistrikter i Nordgrönland (1852) ; Giesecke's Mineralogiske Rejse i Grönland, by Professor Johnstrup (1878), &c.
- ↑ Hoffmeyer, Geog. Mag., 1877, p. 225; Nares, Ibid., p. 316.
- ↑ For additional details regarding temperature, see Rink, lib. cit. (1877), pp. 56, 372; the Collectanea Meteorologica of the Copenhagen Meteorological Institute; the Admiralty's Manual and Instructions for the Arctic Expedition of 1875, pp. 613-749; and Nordenskjöld, Oesterreich. Ges. Met. Zeit., 1872, pp. 114-142.
