IV.—The Lias Rocks.
Many years ago it was asserted by Lieutenant Anjou, of the Russian navy, that ammonites had been found by him in the cliffs on the south shore of the island of New Siberia, off the north coast of Asia, in lat. 74° N. This statement, which was published in Admiral Von Wrangel's journal, attracted but little attention, until it was confirmed, as far as probability of such fossils occurring at so high a latitude is concerned, by the remarkable discovery of similar fossils by Captain M'Clintock, in lat. 76° 20' N., at Point Wilkie, in Prince Patrick's Island.
In a paper, published by the Royal Dublin Society, in the first volume of their journal, p. 223, Captain M'Clintock thus describes the finding of these fossils:—
"After returning to Cape de Bray, we took up the provisions that the officer after whom it is called had left for us, and crossed the strait to Point Wilkie; reached it on the 14th May. This traverse was the more difficult from the great load upon our sledge, and the unfavorable state of the ice and snow. The freshly fallen snow was soft and deep, and beneath it the older snow lay in furrows across our route, hardened and polished by the winter gales and drifts, so that it resembled marble.
"On landing I found the beach low, composed of mud, with the foot-prints of animals frozen in it. A few hundred yards from the beach there are steep hills, about 150 feet in height, and upon the sides of these, in reddish-colored limestone, casts of fossil shells abound. Inland of these, the ordinary pale carboniferous sandstone and cherty limestone re-appeared. The fossils are all small, and of only a few varieties, some being ammonites, but the greater part bivalves. They differed from any I had met with before, and the rock was almost brick-red; I picked up what appeared to be fossil bone (Ichthyosaurus?), only part of it appearing out of the fragment of the rock.
"Point Wilkie appears to be an isolated patch of liassic age, resting upon carboniferous sandstones and limestones, with bands of chert, of the same age as the limestones and sandstones of Melville Island. The eastern shores of Intrepid Inlet is composed of this formation; while the western, rising into hills and terraces, is of the underlying carboniferous epoch. At the western side of Intrepid Inlet I found upon the ice a considerable quantity of white asbestos, but did not ascertain from whence it had been brought."
The fossils thus found in situ, I have no doubt, belong to the liassic period; and as their geological interest is indubitable, I offer no apology for inserting here the following description, written by me on Captain M'Clintock's return to Dublin from his third Arctic expedition.
No. I. WILKIE POINT, Prince Patrick's Land (Lat. 76° 20' N.; Long. 117° 20' W.).
LIAS FOSSILS.