65 



Ordinary Meeting, March 24th, 1885. 



Professor W. C. Williamson LL.D., F.RS., President, 

 in .the Cliair. 



"On Peculiar Ice Forms," by Aeteur Wm. Waters, 

 F.G.S. 



In " Nature," November the 6th of last year, some " Pecu- 

 liar ice forms" were described by Mr. W. Woodd Smith who 

 found " a bare slope almost covered with a coating of ice 

 nearly four inches in depth, and of very curious structure, 



being formed in four layers Each la3^er was composed 



of an aggregation of filaments or elongated crystals, one- 

 sixteenth of an inch and downwards in diameter, and all of 

 a length equal to the thickness of the layer ranged side by 

 side like organ-pipes or basaltic columns and with pyramidal 

 ends." 



Mr. Smith says that " the mass had evidently been pushed 

 up from below," and my observations here certainly leave 

 no doubt in my mind that this is correct. 



In the correspondence* which followed one observer 

 thought that " they were mainly due to the prolonged con- 

 deasation of aqueous vapour from the air;" another authority 

 considered that " the separate layers of ice may possibly be 

 the small remains of four separate and distinct snow storms 

 piled one above the other," and he thinks that this snow has 

 been coaverted into ice and assumed the basaltic form. 



* Since this paper was read an interesting letter from Professor Mc.Gee 

 has appeared in " Nature," March 26th, giving references to a series of 

 letters to which I found no necessity to allude, and in the communication 

 the subject is dealt with from a different standpoint to the one I had in 

 view. 



Proceedings— Lit. & Phil. Soc— Vol. XXIV.— No. 8.— Session 1884-5. 



