]87C> DR. MOSS ON POLAR ICE. 01 



waste exceeds growth near shores. The great " domed " 

 floes tell of gradual decay, because whenever we got 

 a section of them the horizontal strata were cut by the 

 outline of the domes, and the ice of the top of the 

 dome was invariably salt. 



' Occasionally deposits of atmospheric dust were to 

 be met with throughout the stratified ice, sometimes 

 scattered in very minute points which, when examined, 

 proved to be air-cells coated with the impalpable dust 

 sometimes occurring in comparatively conspicuous 

 quantities in lines cutting the stratification and marking 

 what had once been the bottom of a " superglacial 

 lake." (Parry, Fourth Voyage.) 



' Similar dust was to be found on the present 

 surface of the floes occasionally greatly magnified in 

 appearance by the growth amongst it of an Alga, 

 identified by Professor Dickie as Nostoc aureum. The 

 dust often occurred in little granules, so that in mass it 

 formed an oolite. Opposite the Humboldt Glacier I 

 obtained similar oolitic dust, but totally devoid of Alga, 

 from the melted ice of a large iceberg stratified with 

 innumerable perfectly parallel strata only four inches 

 in depth. All the specimens of ice-dust obtained by 

 me from the floebergs are undoubtedly the air-carried 

 debris of crystalline rock not traceable to the neigh- 

 bouring shore.' 



During one of Dr. Moss's journeys he met with a 

 very large floeberg, which had been forced up by 

 pressure on a shallow bank close to William's Island ; 

 he thus describes it : — 



' It deserves special mention as a type of its class. 

 It stood, a huge rectangular mass, forty feet high 



