Land Ice of Arctic and Sub-Arctic Regions 



49 



" Dr. Bunge, who was with Toll on the Xew Siberia Islands, 

 studied the ground ice formation carefully, but he came, in explain- 

 ing the origin of the same formation, to conclusions quite different 

 from those of his companion. According to Bunge's opinion the 

 ground ice is a vein or strata-like formation : ' The contraction of 

 the tundra ground caused by the cold, has given rise to many crev- 

 asses, which must have been large and deep. In spring and summer 

 a heavy rainfall, coming in contact, in those crevasses, with frozen 

 earth, freezes. This goes on a long time, sometimes many years, 

 and in this way large veins of ice are formed in the tundra ground. 

 The water not frozen can expand horizontally and so form hori- 

 zontal sheets of ice. Through the wasting away of the tundra by 

 the sea or a river the vein of ice may be laid bare and so expose an 

 ice wall.' " 



Tolmatschow comments : " It may be remarked the for- 

 mation of the ice in such a way cannot be deduced from its struc- 

 ture. Water forming from snow is very rich in air, but from it 

 ice so rich in air as snow ice cannot form. It is possible that, from 

 the water that first comes into contact with the frozen soil, a thin 

 sheet of ice comparatively rich in air, might be formed. But when 

 the direct action. of the very cold ground on the flowing water is 

 excluded by this sheet of ice, we have conditions very similar to 

 those which lead to the formation of the so-called blue ice of the 

 present time glaciers. The color and name of this (blue) ice comes 

 from the very small number of air-bubbles or from their complete 

 absence, though the water coming from the melting of the surface 

 of the glacier is by no means so poor in air as that of the tundra." 

 Bunge says explicitly that the ice he has seen " has always small 

 cracks and bubbles." Toll also points to the richness of the ice in 

 air bubbles, and this proves once more that the land ice comes from 

 snow. (Toll also gives photographs showing the granular appear- 

 ance of the surface of the ice upon melting to support the conten- 

 tion of its snow origin.) If two learned men collect a large amount 

 of data in the same district from the same formations in order to 

 solve one question, and afterwards come to two conclusions con- 

 tradicting and excluding each other, we must say that the question 

 is not clear, even as it appears on the spot, and more close observa- 

 tion is to be desired. There is no doubt that vein ice is much 

 spread in the tundra, but according to the structure of the ground 

 ice, as it has been described by Bunge and Toll, it cannot have 

 come from water, but from snow. " It seems to me (Tolmatschow) 

 that some of the examples given by Bunge correspond exactly to 

 this (snow) way of formation." 



