MORAINES. 
79 
The moraines consist of three-foot boulders of dolerite, granite and sandstone, 
which are accompanied by very little fine material (Fig. 43). The moraines are 
30 feet wide, and the boulders are scattered thickly over the whole width. At the 
base of Cathedral Rocks another moraine commences and accompanies the other 
four. They produce parallel furrows iu the surface of the ice which increase in 
depth as the boulders disappear. About 10 miles east of Cathedral Rocks these 
moraines are still represented by the parallel depressions, but the boulders are few 
and isolated, and numerous patches of coarse-grained ice mark the positions of those 
which have sunk through. Out on the floating portion of the Ferrar Glacier the 
boulders are even more scattered, and solitary survivors, about 100 yards apart, 
are all that represent the moraines of the upper reaches. 
It was among these moraines, at heights between 3000 and 4000 feet, that we 
found numerous mummi- 
fied carcases of the crab- 
eating seal ( Lobodon car- 
cinophagus). These are 
interesting in that the 
movements of seals ashore 
are always slow and la- 
boured ; how they could 
have travelled 40 miles 
uphill over rough ice and 
soft snow is an unsolved 
mystery. A pecten shell 
was also met with in 
gravel 10 miles up the 
Ferrar Glacier and 20 feet 
above the sea. The gravel 
had formed a glacier-table 
(Fig. 44), and the ice around was all glacier-ice, but is not above the reach of some 
exceptional tidal wave. 
On floating ice at the head of McMurdo Sound there are great quantities of 
moraine (Figs. 45, 47) ; the latter completely covers the .ice and makes it difficult 
to make sure that this great mass is really afloat. There is, however, the tide- 
crack, which, following the land-boundary, marks off this debris - strewn area as a 
stagnant but floating mass. Our observations seem to show that the ice is really 
an overflow from the Ross Piedmont. In Discovery Gulf, also, the surface of the 
floating ice carries much rock and some organic (512, 513) debris, and extends for 
a distance of more than 20 miles from land. Between Black Island and Brown 
Island the morainic matter is unworn, its stones being usually angular. The 
moraines occur in long trains of cones which often rise 50 feet above the general 
Fig. 44 . — Glacier-table formed by a Layer of Gravel. 
