Arctic Regions, vol. i. This observation does not indeed immediately belong to the bloody colour of water; but, as it clearly indicates the abundance of microscopic organization in the sea, it was thought advisable to attend to it.

Though a variety of observations had been made at an earlier period on red snow, the voyage of the English Captain Ross in 1818 and 1820, afforded particular facilities for a varied and fundamental examination of this subject. The red mountains in Baffin's Bay, of 6 English miles long and 600 feet high, showed that their colour was caused by large flakes of red snow scattered upon them; and this phenomenon has not merely been noticed, but the colouring substance has been collected for examination. It was at first taken for birds' mute. Francis Bauer, a microscopic and botanical investigator, and the chemists Wollaston and Thenard, kept the substance for examination. Robert Brown, Hooker, Sprengel, Agardh, De Candolle, and Chladni, have given their opinions concerning it, and, more recently, many other naturalists and philosophers. All, with the exception of Chladni, agree that the colouring matter is a vegetable substance; and botanists unanimously declare it to be not a decomposed dead substance, but a living vegetable organization. It has been variously arranged by authors, hence have arisen the following synonyms for the colouring body. Is the Uredo nivalis of Bauer a genus of Alga? By what affinity is it connected with the Confervis simplicissimis, and the Tremella cruenta? Robert Brown: Palmella nivalis, Hooker: Lepraria kermesina, Wrangel: Protococcus kermesinus, Agardh Chlorococcum, Fries: Vaucheriæ radicatæ affinis, Sprengel: Alga, Ulvis et Nostoc affinis, De Candolle: Sphærella nivalis, Sommerfield: Protococcus nivalis, Agardh. The last mentioned name must be distinguished from that of the more complicated Protococcus nivalis, which Greville received from Captain Carmichael from the shores of the island of Lismore, which Agardh considers as an entirely genus, and calls it Hæmatacoccus Grevillii.

We cannot admit the phantastic opinions, that these bodies are formed in the snow through the influence of the solar rays, but consider them as foreign bodies brought from another situation and deposited on the snow, and, by the melting of which,

they collect in masses, and thus produce the red-coloured patches.

In melting snow, we in general observe, every year, that although it appears dazzlingly white before it melts, yet it may soon be perceived during its melting, to disclose traces of dust which has been mixed with it by the motion of the atmosphere, and which gradually assumes a darker earthy hue, and at length produces a spotted black surface. It is very probable that the snow-plant, during sunshine, may still farther develope itself and increase.

Most botanists agree in this, that these bodies belong to a kind of Alga. Bauer alone says that they are of a mushroom form, of the genus Uredo; and Wrangel, that they are of the lichen form, of the genus Lepraria. The observations of Wrangel are too convincing to be overlooked. Agardh has looked upon the matter in the same light; but it appears to me that with these must be conjoined the observations of the Prior Biselx of St Bernhard, Charpentier, Meisner and Chladni, and which throw into the back ground the doctrine of equivocal. generation. The idea of infusory animals is to be entirely rejected.

The preservation of these red bodies in snow-water for the space of five years, according to the testimony of Agardh, seems to me opposed to the nature of alga, and would rather prove that they are bodies which do not belong to the element of algæ, and which do not develope themselves in it. As land vegetables, they belong either to the lichen or the mushroom. The simplicity of the structure ranks them closely with the mushrooms, and no good reason appears why they may not be denominated Lepraria nivalis. In my Silvis Mycologicis I proposed this arrangement, and I have, after frequent repeated observation, still the same idea.

At the commencement of the year 1819, Chladni wrote his celebrated work on fiery meteors, which I here particularly refer to. He was at that time acquainted with the chemical analysis of the substance in Thomson's Annals of Philosophy, January 1819, and with Bauer's botanical explanation of the colouring body. The former, which proceeded from the conjecture that the substance might be bird's mute, to which the

experiments were always directed, but which terminated in the result that it was a vegetable mass, and probably a cryptogamous plant, had irritated Chladni to such a degree, that he complained, sect. 383, of the valuable meteoric dust being thus wasted by the absurd interference of chemists. In sect. 385, he says that chemists and physicians pretend to know the qualities and origin of this material better than naturalists.

(To be concluded in next Number.)

Observations on the Greenland Sea as connected with the late Disasters in Baffin's Bay *. BY THOMAS LAtta, M. D., Member of the Wernerian Society, with a Map.

T

nicated by the Author.

Commu

It is only thirteen years since the higher latitudes of Baffin's Bay have become famous in the annals of the whale-fishery, and, during that short period, no less than seventy sail, employed by our own countrymen in that trade, have been destroyed, causing not only a national loss in the destruction of much valuable property, but great misery to the numerous families who were dependent on the success of the various enterprises. The frequency of these disasters may be considered as a sufficient apology for our presuming to suggest such means as may tend to diminish the chance of their recurrence. It is true we cannot form any plan, consistent with the prosperity of the voyage, by which the dangers may be entirely averted, because these, for the most part, depend on the movements of the ice, which are very irregular, being controlled by every wind that blows; yet, on viewing the peculiarities of the track pursued by the navigator, and considering the changes effected in these by the advances of the season, we may be able to propose some changes, calculated to diminish the risks inseparable from the present system.

* Dr Latta having visited the Greenland Seas, as our readers will recollect from his former papers in this Journal, his observations may be received as those of one experienced in the nature of arctic regions.