ACTION OF SEA-ICE. 49 



a considerable time, forming the " middle ice " of the whalers. 

 Still, however, a narrow belt remains attached to the shore during 

 a considerable portion of the summer. This is called by the Danes 

 in Greenland the " iis fod," and by the English navigators the 

 "ice-foot." As the spring and summer-thaws proceed, land-slips 

 occur, and earth, gravel, and avalanches of stones come thundering 

 down on the ice-foot, there to remain until it breaks off from the 

 coast, and floats out to sea with its raft-like load of land-debris. As 

 the summer's long sunlight goes on, the ice, worn by the sea, parts 

 with its load ; and this may be shortly after its leaving the lands 

 or it may float tolerably far south. The ice-foot, however, rarely 

 carries its load as far south as the mouth of Davis Strait ; and sea- 

 ice is seldom seen far out of the Arctic regions, while, as we all 

 know, bergs often float far out into the Atlantic. Often fields of ice 

 will float along and, like icebergs, graze the surface of rocks only a 

 wash at low tides ; and therefore its action might be mistaken for 

 that of icebergs or land-ice. In other cases I have known the ice- 

 foot, laden with debris, to be driven up by the wind and high-tides 

 on to low-lying islands, spits, and shores, piling them with the 

 load thus carried from distant localities, so that blocks of trap 

 from the shores of Disco or the Waigat might be drifted up on the 

 beach at Cumberland Sound or on the gneissose shores of South 

 Greenland. 



It has even been found that in shallowish water the ice will freeze 

 to the bottom of the sea ; and in such situations the gravel, blocks, 

 &c, there lying will freeze in and be carried out to sea, to be 

 deposited in course of time in a manner similar to the superin- 

 cumbent loads of the ice-foot, though more speedy. The same 

 phenomenon holds good of the Baltic. In the Sound, the Great 

 Belt, &c, the ground-ice often rises to the surface laden with sand, 

 gravel, stones, and sea-weed. Sheets of ice, with included boulders, 

 are driven up on the coasts during storms and " packed " to a 

 height of 50 feet. How easily such sheets of ice, with included 

 sand, gravel, or boulders, may furrow and streak rocks beneath 

 may be imagined. 1 The patches of gravel on the pack-ice are 

 owing, I think, to portions of the gravel-laden ice-foot having got 

 among the ordinary materials of the pack ; for I do not think that 

 ice formed in dee]) water, unless when it passes over rocks, and 

 therefore may take up fragments of stone or earth, lias any geo- 

 logical significance. 



1 Porchhammer in ' Hull, de la Soc. Geol. de France, 1817,' t. iv. pp. 1182-8:'.; 

 Lyell's 'Principles' (11th Ed.), vol. i., p. 383. 



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