62 VOYAGE TO THE POLAR SEA. July 



above the floe. Its lower fifteen feet were of im- 

 stratified blue ice, enclosing yellow patches of surface 

 salt-water diatomaceae between spaces of ice with their 

 lines of air-cells differently inclined. The remaining 

 twenty-five feet was banded with eighteen of the usual 

 white and blue horizontal layers — white where the ice 

 is spongy with air-cells, blue in the denser layers above 

 and below. The height was too great to detect 

 " dust-bands." Above all, and covered only by the 

 surface-snow, were sections in olive-tinted ice of what 

 had once been surface-pools.' 



It is a question with me whether this may not 

 have been a piece of ice formed in an enclosed sea like 

 Clements Markham Inlet, where the floes do probably 

 increase superficially. 



In Captain Markham's journey over the Polar pack 

 during the spring, he and Lieutenant Parr were 

 directed to endeavour to obtain information concern- 

 ing the creation and yearly change of the aged floes, 

 and to ascertain, if possible, whether the surface-snow 

 became transformed into ice or not either by pres- 

 sure or otherwise. On their return Captain Markham 

 reported as follows : — 



' The opportunities for observations in the trans- 

 formation of snow into ice on the surface of the floes 

 were rare, and only occurred when a floe appeared to 

 have been recently broken up, and without having had 

 hummocks and snow-drifts piled round its edges. In 

 these cases, the section of the snow was as sharp as that 

 of the ice, and followed all its irregularities. 



4 Lieutenant Parr was most assiduous in his re- 

 searches into this interesting subject, and I am much 



