I9I0.] INLAND-ICE OF THE ARCTIC REGIONS. 105 



pense of neighboring crystals, must require either fusion from 

 temporary elevation of temperature, or from pressure. The obser- 

 vations of von Drygalski were made on the ice of the marginal 

 tongues and on the blue layers of the inland-ice ; but as the samples 

 taken farthest from the margins were found at a height of only 

 500 meters, the results throw little light upon the conditions of sur- 

 face snow within the interior, where melting does not take place. 

 In view of recent studies in Antarctica it is unlikely that firn or neve 

 snow will be found within the interior except at considerable depths 

 below the surface. 



Nansen has described the fine " frost snow " which falls almost 

 daily from an air layer near the snow surface, from which its mois- 

 ture has been derived. Melting does not occur there, as already 

 stated, except perhaps for a few days in the height of summer 

 when a thin crust develops upon the surface. '^^ Peary has referred 

 to the snow at the highest altitudes which he reached in north 

 Greenland as " unchanging and incoherent." This dry hard snow 

 chased by the wind, has the cutting effect of sand in a blast, and 

 thus is offered still another parallel with deserts and their wind 

 blown sand. Each new storm, we are told by Stein,"'' piles up a 

 snowbank on the lee sides of nunataks, but the next storm, coming 

 from a somewhat different direction and laden with fine hard snow, 

 cuts away the earlier deposit as would a sand blast. Peary dis- 

 covered one of his earlier snow huts partly cut away by this process. 



Snow Drift Forms of Deposition and Erosion — sastrugi. — The 

 minor inequalities of the snow surface as determined by the wind 

 blowing over the inland-ice, have been mentioned more or less per- 

 sistently by all Arctic travellers, since upon the character of this 

 surface has so largely depended the celerity of movement in sledge 

 journeys. It is unfortunate that no one has discussed the subject 

 from a scientific standpoint, for it has great significance in connec- 



" " Thus it will be seen that at no great distance from the east coast the 

 surface of dry snow begins, on which the sun has no other effect than to 

 form a thin crust of ice. The whole of the surface of the interior is entirely 

 the same." (Nansen, /. c, Vol. 2, p. 478.) 



" Robt. Stein, Congres international pour 1 etude des regions polaires. 

 Brussels, 1906, pp. 1-4 (separate). 



