24 ARE THERE ANY MOUNTAINS IN THE INTERIOR? 



would certainly not be the case if the ice sloped from any moun- 

 tain range or in its tract to the coast touched any land at all. No 

 living creature — animal or plant — appeared on this desolate glacier- 

 field except a trace here and there of the red snow-plant (Protococcm 

 nivalis, P. vulgaris, &c), so common in Alpine and Arctic regions. I 

 find, however, that Dr. Berggren discovered, as already noted, what 

 in our anxiety and other duties we might have omitted to observe — 

 various low forms of vegetable life, chiefly Diatomacece — though 

 approaching the Zygonemacece (Scytonema gracilis, &c). These might 

 be expected, as we continually find them in hollows of icebergs 

 (vide Sutherland's ' Arctic Voyage with Captain Penny,' and my 

 paper on the discolouration of the sea 1 — the facts in which have 

 been confirmed both by the Germans and Swedes. I am therefore 

 of opinion that the great ice-field slopes from the east to the 

 west coast of Greenland (chiefly), 2 and that any bergs which may 

 be seen on the coast are from local glaciers, or from some un- 

 important defluent of the great interior ice. Nor do I think a range 

 of mountains at all necessary for the formation of this huge mer de 

 glace, for this idea is derived from the Alpine and other mountain 

 ranges where the glacial system is a petty affair compared with 

 that of Greenland. I look upon Greenland and its interior ice- 

 field — to recapitulate what I will have occasion more fully to 

 enter upon when describing the inland ice (p. 34) — in "the light 

 of a broad-lipped, shallow vessel, but with breaks in the lips here 

 and there, and the glacier like some viscous matter in it. As more 

 is poured in, the viscous matter will run over the edges, naturally 

 taking the line of the chinks as its line of outflow. The broad lips 

 of the vessel, in my homely simile, are the outlying islands or 

 " outskirts ;" the viscous matter in the vessel the inland ice, the 

 additional matter continually being poured in the enormous snow 

 covering, which, winter after winter, for seven or eight months in 

 the year, falls almost continuously on it ; and the chinks or breaks 

 in the vessel are the fjords or valleys down which the glaciers, repre- 

 senting the outflowing viscous matter, empty the surplus of the 

 vessel. In other words, the ice flows out in glaciers — overflows 

 the land, in fact, down the valleys and fjords of Greenland — by force 

 of the superincumbent weight of snow, just as does the grain on 

 the floor of a barn when another sackful is emptied on the top of 

 the mound already on the floor. The want of much slope, there- 

 fore, in the country, and the absence of any great mountain range, 



' Trans. Botanical Society Eclin.,' vol. ix. 



' Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc.'Lond., 1871,' pp. 671-701. 



