GLACIAL STUDIES IN GREENLAND 583 



tant \-ariation in the mode of their deployment. If it shall 

 appear that there are no essential differences between the action 

 of small ice-caps and large ones, an important gain to interpre- 

 tational methods will have been realized ; for, if magnitude does 

 not constitute an important source of difference in mode of action 

 in high latitudes, it probably does not in low latitudes, where only 

 small glaciers exist and comparisons in magnitude are impossible 

 beyond the narrowest limits. In so far as a comparison of the 

 foregoing small ice-caps and their dependencies with the great 

 ice-cap and its dependencies, yet to be described, contributes to 

 the adjudication of the element of magnitude as a factor in gla- 

 ciation it subserves a function to which few contributions have 

 been possible heretofore. 



It will of course not be overlooked that there is an important 

 distinction between the small glaciers which we have just studied 

 and the small alpine glaciers that have been the chief subjects 

 of study in southern latitudes. The glaciers of Redcliff penin- 

 sula all radiate from a common ice-cap gathered upon a plateau 

 of moderate elevation. The glaciers of like magnitude of south- 

 ern latitudes hang on mountain slopes or nestle in mountain val- 

 leys. The nearest approach to an ice-cap in these regions is 

 found in the snow fields that mantle the mountain cols. The 

 rugged environment of the alpine glaciers has given to them a 

 burden of superficial detritus which very much obscures their 

 basal features and has imposed a constraint in deployment which 

 very much distorts their normal evolution. From these restrict- 

 ing conditions the glaciers of the Redcliff peninsula are almost 

 wholly free. 



A special point of comparison between small and large ice- 

 fields, of supreme importance in its bearings on the interpreta- 

 tion of the drift of the Ice Age, is the mode of introduction and 

 transportation of rock debris. The small fields show us these 

 phenomena as executed in short distances ; the great fields, in 

 long distances. The diameter of the Redcliff peninsula is not 

 more than fifteen miles ; the diameter of the great ice-cap is 

 700 miles, a ratio of about one to fifty. None of the material 



