AMONGST THE SOUTHERN ICE. 249 



up of large fragments closely packed together. The pieces were 

 not, however, much tilted or heaped up upon one another, as 

 commonly occurs in packs. 



Off the edge of the pack, extended serpentine bands of float- 

 ing ice which drifted before the wind ; they are termed, " stream 

 ice." We dredged within one of the streams. All the packs 

 which we saw were similar to the one described. 



Sometimes, the smaller floating masses of ice at the edge of 

 the pack were covered with fresh snow. The parts of them 

 projecting above water were sometimes of very fantastic shapes. 

 Some were like the antlers of deer, others like two pairs of 

 antlers with three or four upstanding and branching horns, all 

 borne aloft by irregularly shaped submerged floats. The soft 

 upper masses of loose or but slightly congealed snow often split 

 off and fell away as the masses floated past. 



The ice was frequently stained of the yellow ochreous tint 

 described by Sir J. D. Hooker, and found by him to be caused 

 by Diatoms washed up on to the ice by the waves, and hanging 

 on its rough surface.* The colouring was always most marked 

 about the honeycombed wash-lines of the ice blocks. Pancake 

 ice is similarly discoloured by Diatoms in the Arctic regions.t 



On February 25th we entered the edge of the pack, sailing 

 amongst some loosened outliers of it. The sea was covered 

 with masses of ice up to 10 feet in length. These consisted 

 mostly of light snow ice, and did not project more than from 

 two to four feet out of water. The upper parts of the masses 

 were composed of white fresh snow, or honeycombed wet frozen 

 snow, which had been partly melted by the waves. Very many 

 of these ice masses were stained of an ochre tint, by Diatoms and 

 other surface organisms. 



The lower submerged ice was transparent, but extremely full 

 of large air vesicles. The ice below the water line, and under 



* Sir J. D. Hooker's collections were described by Ehrenberg. See 

 Capt. Boss's " Antarctic Voyage," Vol. I, p. 339, 341. London, J. Murray, 

 1847. Ehrenberg's " Eeport on Deposit from Pancake Ice," collected by 

 Dr. Hooker. 



t Eobert Brown, " On the Discolouration of the Arctic Seas." Quart. 

 Jour. Micro. Sci., 1865, p. 240. 



