194 F roceed in(j.s of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



away from the face of the glacier. The deposit now forming 

 at the extremity of the western lobe of the Malaspina glacier, 

 where it breaks oft' into the sea, must be very similar to the strata 

 forming these remarkable hills." 



With tliis interpretation of the record we do not wholly agree ; 

 if the glacial silt was brought to the position it occupied prior to 

 the uplifting of the beds by sub-glacial streams, it is not 

 conceivable that the beds which were being formed from the 

 sediments they carried should receive no boulders or gravel from 

 the overlying stationary ice-sheet but only from those portions of 

 the ice-froiit which had broken ofF and were presumably moving 

 away from the area into which it is supposed they dropped the 

 boulders, etc., they carried. The error has, we think, arisen from 

 the assumption that a tongue of ice protruding into the sea is 

 everywhere in contact with the sea-bottom beneath it, and this is 

 an assumption that can only be upheld by showing that sub- 

 glacial streams do not flow beneath a protruding tongue of ice and 

 and is at variance with facts observed at the extremity of a 

 glacier terminating on land. If the weight of the foremost parts 

 of a land glacier can be sustained by the sides of the glacier 

 valley and the c<')lumns of ice which sepaiate the channels from 

 which the ice-streains issue, it is entirely within the range of 

 probability that when the glacier enters the sea and the force 

 of buoyancy of the displaced water comes into play in the opposite 

 direction to the weight of the mass that the advancing tongue 

 will have contact with the sea-bottom only in places, and that 

 there will exist channels which will permit of the flowing of the 

 sub-glacial streams. These channels will change as the melting 

 and scouring out of the ice ' continues, and this will permit of a 

 wide and sometimes irregular distribution of the matter suspended 

 in the streams and washed out of the ice. If the slope of the 

 sea-bottom be sufficiently steep, the protruding ice-tongue may 

 easily reach a point at which it requires no contact with the 

 sea-bottom to support it, but is entirely upheld by the force of 

 buoyancy arising from the displaced water ; in this case there 

 is no difficulty in accounting either for the stratification of the 

 beds or the presence in them of included boulders. 



There can be no doubt that the sandstones have been deposited 

 in fairly deep calm water ; false bedding is not entirely absent 



