104 HOBBS— CHARACTERISTICS OF THE [April 22, 



sometimes to the height of the head. If the wind becomes a gale, the air 

 will be thick with the blinding drift to the height of 100 feet or more. I 

 have seen in the autumn storms in this region round an amphitheatre of 

 some 15 miles, snow pouring down in a way that reminds one of Niagara. 

 When it is remembered that this flow of the atmosphere from the cold 

 heights of the interior ice-cap to the lower land of the coast is going on 

 throughout the year with greater or less intensity, and that a fine sheet of 

 snow is being thus carried beyond the ice-cap, to the ice-free land at every 

 foot of the periphery of the ice-cap, it will perhaps be seen that the above 

 assumption is not excessive. I feel confident that an investigation of the 

 actual amount of this transfer of snow by the wind is well w-orth the atten- 

 tion of all glacialists. 



Fringing Glaciers Formed from Wind Drift. — In the vicinity of 

 Inglefield Gulf in northwest Greenland, the inland-ice ends in a 

 steep, snowy slope rising to a height of about 100 feet, where is a 

 terminal moraine, above which moraine rises the great dome of the 

 inland-ice. The whiteness and freshness of a portion of the snow 

 of the outer border, when examined by Chamberlin,'® showed it to 

 be wind drift of recent accumulation. Locally, however, older and 

 discolored snow appeared beneath the whiter surface snow, and in 

 a few places stratified granular ice with some included rock debris. 

 This snow and ice becomes augmented from year to year and is, in 

 Chamberlin's opinion, a species of fringing glacier. Such fringes 

 were from a few rods to a half mile in breadth, and where a favor- 

 able depression existed, one was observed extending for a mile or 

 more down the valley. Commander Peary has found this a domi- 

 nant feature on the north Greenland coast. Fringing glaciers of 

 this type have also been described by Salisbury from the vicinity 

 of Melville Bay. Their movement was clearly evinced by their 

 structure and by the debris which they carried. ^"^ 



Nature of the Surface Snozu of the Inland-ice. — The surface 

 snow from the marginal zones of the inland-ice has the granular 

 form characteristic of neves, as has been shown with exceptional 

 clearness in elaborate studies by von Drygalski.^^ Such grains, 

 grown by accretions from a single crystal nucleus and at the ex- 



'*T. C. Chamberlin, "Glacial Studies in Greenland, VI.," Jour. Geoi, 

 Vol. 3, 1895, pp. 580-581. 



""' Salisbury, Jour. Geol, Vol. 3- P- 886. 



" " Gronland-Expedition," etc., Vol. I, 1897. 



