White Sea Basin fields of such magnitude are created only for a short time and under special con- 

 ditions — during heavy colds and weak winds. No ice fields are found in the Mezem Gulf due to 

 strong tidal phenomena. 



Ordinarily, the closer to shore, the smaller the sizes of the fields, and furthermore, in the 

 summer time, especially after strong winds they decrease. Strong winds also break up large ice 

 fields during the winter. In areas of the ocean where the edge of the ice is always sharply ex- 

 pressed, as, for example, in the Greenland and Barents Seas, large and small floes predominate 

 at the very edge of the field, which should be attributed to the breaking-up action of sea waves and 

 variations. 



Ice fields and floes, depending on the conditions of their formation and structure, can be 

 either accretional or rafted, and depending on their external appearance, level or hummocky. 



Any collision of one ice formation with another, no matter what the cause, is accompanied 

 by more or less considerable hummocking. If the ice formations advancing on one another come 

 in contact with one or several points widely separated from each other, the ice at the points of 

 contact breaks and turns over on its side; as a result, there remain on the comparatively level 

 surface of the ice floes sticking up edgewise which are called "hummocks. "* If the contact during 

 compression occurs more or less uniformly, heaping occurs along the line of contact, and this is 

 called a hummock. 



In some cases, hummocks attain extremely large dimensions. During winter and the follow- 

 ing spring, they become more dense and very durable formations During the summer, due to 

 their durability and size, hummocks, surrounded by areas of flat ice, melt last of all. Separate 

 ice formations along the southern edge of the ice, in the majority of cases during summer and 

 autumn, are remnants of hummocks. They have comparatively small horizontal surface and a 

 comparatively large vertical size, and are called "growlers. " 



Large separate heapings of this type, higher than 5 m above the water level, are called 

 "floebergs, " or icebergs of marine origin. 



Formations of the same sort, less then 5 m high above the surface of the water, are called 

 "ice heaps. " 



Especially in the autumn, growlers, flying over the open spaces of the frontiers of the Arctic 

 Basin seas due to the effect of the wind and the currents, often are grounded due to their deep draft, 

 (on the shallows which are numerous here) and become stamukhs , Gathering in the deeper areas 

 of the sea and freezing together during the autumn, the growlers form very powerful and highly 

 characteristic ice formations, which in the old days were called "kettles. " 



Schematically, the kettles represent a series of ridges of almost conical form, having deep 

 valleys and depressions between them. 



During the winter, an extremely characteristic type consists of smorosi ■ Along the White 

 Sea this term is understood to mean accumulations of crushed ice and ice porridge which have been 

 brought together by the winds and currents and have frozen together. Smorozi can attain large 



*In the White Sea, above -water parts of a hummock are called ropaki and the under-water 



parts— pod so yy. 



110 



