During Captain Penny’s voyage in search of Sir John Franklin, he picked up two pieces of floating drift-wood, far beyond the usual limit of Eskimo occupation, which, from their peculiar appearance, excited a lively curiosity. The one was found in Robert Bay, off Hamilton Island, lat. 76° 2’ north, and long. 76° west,--that is, in the route which Franklin’s ships, it is supposed, had followed,--and was plainly a fragment of wrought elm plank, which had been part of a ship’s timbers. It exhibited three kinds of surface,--one that had been planed and pitched, one roughly sawn, and the third split with an axe. The second piece of drift-wood was picked up on the north side of Cornwallis Island, in lat. 75° 36’ north, and long. 96° west. It was a branch of white spruce, much bleached in some places, and in others charred and blackened as if it had been used for fuel. On both fragments traces of microscopic vegetation were discovered; and as it was thought they might, if carefully examined, afford some clue to the fate of Franklin’s expedition, they were submitted to Mr. Berkeley, a well-known naturalist. In the report which he addressed to the Admiralty, he stated that the vegetation in both cases resembled the dark olive mottled patches with which wooden structures in this country, if exposed to atmospheric influences, are speedily covered. The bleached cells and fibres of the fragment of elm were filled up with slender fungoid forms, _myceliæ_; while on its different surfaces appeared several dark-coloured specks, belonging to the genus _Phoma_. As it was not probable that plants so minute could have retained, through the terrible severity of an Arctic winter, their delicate naked spores in the perfect condition in which they were found, Mr. Berkeley concluded that they must have been developed through that same summer; while from three to four years, in those high latitudes and amid the rigour of stormy ice-covered seas, would suffice to produce the bleached appearance of the wood. Hence he inferred that the plank had not been long exposed. On the other fragment of drift-wood he discovered some deeply-embedded minute black fungoid forms, called _Sporidesmium lepraria_. Unlike the _phomas_, which are very ephemeral, these plants possess the longevity of the lichens, and the same patches last for years unchanged on the same pieces of wood, while their traces are discernible for a still longer period. From their condition, Mr. Berkeley inferred that the fungi on the drifted wood had not been recently developed, but that, on the contrary, they were the remains of the species which existed on the drift-wood when used for fuel by the unfortunate crews of Franklin’s ships, the _Erebus_ and the _Terror_.