FARQUHAESON ON FORMATION OF GROUND ICE. 349 



elephant pipe was supposed to have been found in the same lo- 

 cality — but as the finder had moved to Kansas, no definite in- 

 formation had yet been obtained.* 



The foUowine; papers were read : 



The Formation of Ground Ice in the Rapids of the Mississippi. 



BY DR. R. J. FARQUII ARSON. 



In this country, where everything but nature is new, where man, at 

 least of our own race, is but a recent arrival, it is the duty of such pio- 

 neer institutions as our Academy to diligently study our surroundings, 

 and to faithfully record the more prominent and important phenomena. 



To one of these, a phenomenon on the grandest scale, I would ask 

 your attention to-night ; it has been constantly recurring, season after 

 season, for many ages, certainly since that time, when at the close of 

 the last Glacial Period, the present course of our great river, the Missis- 

 sippi, was laid out. Many persons, some of my present audience no 

 doubt, have remarked the sudden appearance of a great quantity of 

 floating ice in front of the city of Davenport, where the near approach 

 of winter is regularly signalized by this event. 



On one of the bright, clear days of our early winter, say in the latter part 

 of November, the observer leaves tiie river at sunset perfectly clear of 

 floating ice, during the night the mercury falls to any degree below 20« of 

 Fahrenheit, in the morning he is surprised to find almost the whole sur- 

 face of the river, as far as the eye can reach, both up and down, covered 

 with floating cakes of ice. 



Being alone familiar with our Southern riveis, which rarely close, and 

 those only by means of a " gorge" of floating masses of surface ice, 

 which have formed at the shores of the river, and then become detached, 

 I fell into the natural error of attributing the accumulation of ice here 

 to the same cause. 



But a very little further observation was sufficient to dispel this error. 

 On such a raoi'ning as is here described, the shore ice would be found to 

 be not over one or two inches in thickness, and to extend not more than 

 from ten to twenty feet from the shore, to which, moreover, it would 

 yet remain attached. 



If the observer now placed himself upon the Government bridge, and 



* By a letter from Mr. Peter Mare, now living: in Kau^ias, we are informed that he found 

 this elephant pipe six or seven years since, while planting corn on his farm in Louisa County, 

 Iowa, where he then resided. He kept it until last year, when he moved to Kansas, and then 

 gave it to his brother-in-law, from whom we obtained it. Rev, Mr, Gass heard indirectly last 

 winter of the existence of such a relic, sought out the owner and endeavored to purchase it, 

 but could not. He, however, borrowed it for the purpose of taking photographs and casts. 

 While in our possession it was accidentally broken, and thus by compromising the matter 

 with the owner, and paying him about $.5.00, we obtained ownership of it. The linder, Mr. 

 Mare, an illiterate German farmer, had no appreciation of any scientific value or especial 

 interest attaching to this pipe; he regarded it as a curiosity merely, and his brother-in-law 

 valued it only as a keepsake, and used it habitually for smolimg.— {Extract from the Pro- 

 -ceedings of the Meeting of Aj)rll int/t. 1879.* 



[Proc. D. A. N. S., Vol. II.] 46 [Jan. 1880 1 



