NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 447 
only recognisable by the brighter green that marked the sites, 
A single rib lying near the beach showed that at some time whales 
must have penetrated Smith Sound to this point. At the period of 
our visit very little snow was lying on Norman Lockyer Island; its 
summit, some 400 feet high, showed a great amount of glacial 
Scratchings, The highest point is its southern face, and from 
there the land slopes gradually to the sea, the dip of the rock being 
from south to north. The lines of old Sea-margin are very con- 
spicuously marked on the island by a series of terraces extending 
across its face. These terraces are formed of angular, weathered 
fragments of limestone, containing a few fossils, which also appear 
in the parent rock. I brought away from there Favoséles goth- 
landicus and F. alveolaris, well-known Upper Silurian forms. The 
fact of the terraces on Norman Lockyer Island being formed of 
angular fragments at once attracted our attention, for it showed 
that they were not sea-beaches in the ordinary sense of the term, 
wherein the component pebbles are found more or less rounded, 
My attention was naturally directed to the ice-foot, which clings 
to the shore, for a solution of the problem, and I am convinced 
that these terraces are formed by the ice-foot banking up the 
material as it falls from the cliffs above. A long series of subse- 
quent observations confirmed me in the following views :— 
“The typical aspect of the ice-foot in Smith Sound is that of a terrace of 
fifty to a hundred yards in width, stretching from the base of the talus to 
the water's edge, its width varying with the slope of the sea-bottom, 
decreasing in direct proportion to the increase of the land slope. 
“The first action of the solar rays is exerted on the snow forming the 
uppermost layer of the ice-foot which lies nearest to and upon the talus, 
the dark surfaces of which rapidly absorb the heat of the sun. A deep 
trench is formed in the snow at the junction, which becomes filled with 
water, partly derived from the melted snow of the ice-foot and partly from 
that pouring down from the uplands; these united streams in a few hours 
eat deep channels across the ice-foot and discharge themselves into the sea 
through transverse gullies. At low water the ditches and gullies are 
drained, whilst at high water the sea pours in through these apertures 
with considerable violence, and sweeping right and left, traverses the ditch, 
eats away the base of the talus, and re-assorts the material.” « 
Our enforced delay gave us several opportunities for dredging, 
but only in shallow water, not more than twenty fathoms. The fishes 
* Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc., 1878, p. 565, 
