48 Smithsonian Exploration in Alaska in 1904 



and contend, on the basis of these variable facts, that the bed of 

 ice it may be confused with is also a deposit of snow drift origin. 



6. LAND ICE in SIBERIA 



The real significance of land ice in Siberia with explanations to 

 account for its origin appear to be as confused as the opinions con- 

 cerning analogous phenomena in Alaska. 



According to Toll's opinion ^* the ground ice deposits are nothing 

 else than fossil glaciers, but he admits for certain cases the same 

 origin Tolmatschow ^^ accepts for the Beresowka ice. " If we 

 observe," Toll says,°° " the map, we see that masses of stone ice 

 apparently of the type of a fossil glacier are to be found at the 

 mouths of rivers. And if admitted, as I shall show later on, that 

 the islands of New Siberia and the continent were still united in the 

 Quaternary period it will be easy to reconstruct the courses of the 

 rivers between the islands and the continent. In this case it may 

 be thought that the masses of snow ice belong to the river terraces, 

 i. e., that they are the remains of snow fallen during the winter, 

 which have been covered by the spring overflow of the rivers and 

 then fossilized. I admit that some isolated cases like this do happen. 

 But observation of the conditions I have learned to know, as on the 

 Ljachow islands, will hardly permit me to think that such an excep- 

 tional formation has given rise to those imposing accumulations and 

 others like them." 



The observations of Toll, who reported having seen on the 

 southern coast of Ljachow Island an uninterrupted sheet of ice, with 

 an earth layer on it, nearly ten versts long, have been criticised by 

 Bunge." Bunge thinks that when Toll visited the island the whole 

 coast was covered with deep snow, and this snow has been taken by 

 Toll to be an ice sheet. Toll was there in the spring. Bunge in the 

 summer. 



Toll supposes such deposits of ice represent the remains of 

 glaciers, basing such contention primarily upon its physical char- 

 acteristics, that it can only be snow ice, and resembles white glacier 

 ice, or even neve, because rich in air. Tolmatschow supports Toll 

 as far as favoring the view that the deposits are of snow origin: 



" Die fossilien Eislager und ihre Beziehungen zu den Mammuthleichen. 

 Mem. d. I'Acad. Imp. d. Sci., VII Ser., T. XLII, No. 13. 



'"^ Bodeneis vom FIuss Beresowka. Verhandl. d. K. Min. Geo.. 2 Sen, 

 Bd. XL, pp. 415-452. 



°'0p. cit. p. 79. 



" Einige Worte zur Bodeneisfrage. Verh. d. R. K. Min. Geo., St. Pb., 

 II Ser., Bd. 40, p. 205. 



