THE MORAINES. 45 



August, and on until late in autumn, they pour out in great numbers. 

 In concluding what I have got to say regarding the subglacial 

 rivers, I cannot help remarking that the effect of this great ice- 

 covering over Greenland must be to thoroughly denude any soft 

 sedimentary strata which might have reclined on the underlying 

 igneous rocks at the time when the whole country got so over- 

 spread. Now we know that during the later Miocene epoch the 

 country supported a luxuriant vegetation, as evinced by the remains 

 which I and others have collected from these beds. 1 I was struck, 

 when studying this subject in Greenland, with the fact (though I 

 have no desire to push the theory too far) that the only places 

 where I did not see former ice-action were the very localities where 

 these Miocene beds repose. These localities are a very limited 

 district on either side of the Waigat Strait, on Noursoak Penin- 

 sula, and Disco Island, neither of these localities having apparently 

 been overlain at any time by the great inland ice. Noursoak Penin- 

 sula juts out from the land, and only nourishes small glaciers of its 

 own ; and Disco Island is high land, possessing a miniature inland 

 ice or mer de glace, with defluent glaciers of its own. If the great 

 inland ice had ever ground over this tract, I hardly think it possible 

 that the soft sandstone, shales, and coal-beds could have survived 

 the effects of this ice-file for any length of time. 



5. Tlie Moraines. — Moraines are usually classified as lateral, 

 median, terminal, and profonde, 2 or under the glacier. From the 

 simple character of the Greenlander glacier, as described, it will be 

 readily seen that the median moraine, formed by the junction of 

 two lateral moraines, must be rare, while the terminal takes, ex- 

 cept in rare instances, another form. Ordinary Alpine glaciers, 

 when grinding down between the two sides of a mountain-gorge, 

 get accumulated on their sides rubbish, such as earth, rocks, &c, 

 which fall either by being undermined by the glacier, by 

 frost, or by land-slips, until two lateral moraines are formed. If 

 the glacier anastomoses with a second, it is evident that two of the 

 lateral moraines will unite in the common glacier into a median one. 

 W hen the glacier terminates, this moraine, carried along with it, 

 is deposited at its base, and forms the terminal moraine. Over the 



1 Beer, in the ' Philosophical Transactions, 1869,' pp. 445-488. In this treatise 

 of Prof. II<> t I have printed a few notes on the geology of these Miocene heds ; 

 bat, owing to an accident, 1 did not see them in proof. ilnnc tin re arc several 

 errors. The title of the paper is also apt tomislead. These geological andother 

 points I have since corrected in a full accountof the geology of the Waigat Straits, 

 4c, with illustrative map ('Trans. Geol. See, Glasgow,' vol. v. part t. p. 55). 



2 The term mom;,,' ■profonde was Bret used by Hogard in his 'Coup d'oeil sur 

 Le t* train erratique des Vosgea ' ( 1851 ), p. 10. 



