270 G-LACIAL GEAVELS OP MAINE. 



to the sea level and end in cliffs near the heads of the fiords, where the ice 

 breaks off as icebergs. Still farther north these glaciers extend out nearly 

 to the mouths of the fiords, and they become broader. Finally the glaciers 

 become confluent in great ice-sheets that confront the sea in a soHd and 

 continuous Avail for a hundred miles or more. Part of this great breadth is 

 due to the climate, part, perhaps, is due to the form of land surface. Groing 

 from the coast inland we find the ice surface rapidly rising. Near the shore 

 the ice usually barely fills the valleys, leaving the mountains bare. Inland 

 only a short distance, we find but few peaks (nunatakker) projecting 

 above the ice. Within 30 or 50 miles we reach a region where even the 

 highest peaks are wholly beneath a great continuous ice-and-snow field. 

 In the interior no moraine stuff appears on the surface of the ice, though 

 there is more or less dust, the kryokonite of Nordenskjold. Some morainal 

 matter falls from the nunatakker onto the ice as we approach nearer the 

 margin, but near the extremity maiiy stones and bowlders appear on the 

 surface. Many of these are in situations where they are supposed not to 

 have fallen on the surface from nunatakker, but have got up into the ice 

 from below, and were subsequently exposed hj the melting of the ice or 

 by movements witliin the ice. These are glaciated little or not at all. In 

 several places the Danish geologists have seen a ground moraine, as, for 

 instance, where a thin flow of ice takes place over the cols between two or 

 more nunatakker while the deep mass divides and flows around them. The 

 two main streams unite a short distance below the buried ridge. In lee of 

 the buried ridge a moraine is formed, brought over by the thin sheet. The 

 material of this moraine is intensely glaciated. In some cases a moraine 

 profonde has been seen beneath the ice near its extremity.^ 



THE TILIi. 



While in general the unmodified glacial drift, or till, rests upon the 

 preglacial soils and the glaciated rock, yet there are local exceptions where 

 a later deposit rests on the rock in consequence of the absence of till or 

 the occurrence of landslips. Indeed, landslips have been so common that 

 it is unsafe to trust any inferences as to the chronological order of events 



I This account is condensed from tlie above-mentioned authors, quoted by J. E. Marr in Geol. 

 Mag., April, 1887. 



Since the above was vrritten a paper on Hoist's observations in Greenland has been published 

 in the American* Naturalist (July and August, 1888), by Dr. J. Lindahl. 



