446 I. P. Косн. 
søen was one of the fjord arms of Dove Bugt, but that about fifty 
years ago it must have flooded Hvalsletten, during an exceptionally 
high water-level in Dove-Bugt'). In this connection I shall call 
attention to the fact that Sælsøen is a marginal lake in which the 
inland ice calves. In spite of the above-mentioned terminal moraine 
which forms a barrier over a greater part of the western end of the 
lake, the water depth above the part of the moraine, which lies be- 
low the water, is however quite sufficient to permit the icebergs, 
which are it is true quite small, to float away and drift towards east. 
It is certain that the bottom of the lake, also in this place, lies con- 
siderably below the level of the sea, and it is consequently not ex- 
Fig. 139. View across Sælsøen. Germania Land. April. 
cluded that the lake may at times be connected with Jokelbugten 
below Koefoed-Hansens Bre, or with the ice fjord of Storstrømmen 
(Borgfjorden) below Storströmmen. (The water of the marginal lakes 
in the moraine district northwest of Anneksgen, the altitude of which, 
above the level of the sea, is zero, was judging by a somewhat un- 
certain estimate from the taste faintly saline, and thus presumably 
was connected with Jokelbugten, from which the lakes are separated 
by a distance of about 45 km.) 
In the fact that the water at the bottom of Sælsøen had a 
temperature of - 2.36 TROLLE finds a support for his hypothesis, 
seeing that the water would here become heated by overflooding 
Hvalsletten. It is however hardly necessary to have recourse to a 
possibility of this kind in order to explain the presence of the warm 
water in Selsgen. 
1) Hydrographical Observations etc., pp. 384—88. 
