Reviews. 



Greenland Ice Fields and lifo in the North Atlantic, with a New 

 Discussion of the Causes of the Ice Age. By G. Frederick 

 Wright, D.D., LL.D., F.G.S.A., author of "The Ice Age 

 in North America," etc., and Warren Upham, A.M., 

 F.G.S.A., late of the Geological Survey of New Hampshire, 

 Minnesota, and the United States. New York : D. Apple- 

 ton & Company, 1896. 



The contributions of the two authors of this volume are essentially 

 equal, the one having prepared eight and the other seven of its fifteen 

 chapters. The names of both authors appear duly on the title page as 

 above indicated, but only the name of Wright appears on the cover. 

 The book takes its point of departure from the unfortunate Miranda 

 Expedition which, after a series of minor mishaps, met with a decisive 

 disaster off the harbor of Sukkertoppen in South Greenland on the 9th 

 of August, 1894. The senior author was a member of that expedition 

 and spent two weeks on the coast of southern Greenland. The junior 

 author has never visited Greenland. With this scant basis of personal 

 observation it is obvious that the work is essentially a compilation so far 

 as its main theme is concerned. The only original contributions to 

 the ice fields of Greenland are the brief observations of Professor 

 Wright on the local glaciers back of Sukkertoppen. The designation 

 of the glaciers as local is not the author's. On the contrary. Professor 

 Wright ends an enthusiastic description of the principal one visited by 

 him, near Ikamiut, with this climax: "This was verily a part of the 

 inland ice " (p. 94). As a further enforcement of this conception he 

 introduces a map, here reproduced in part (Fig. i), which represents a 

 tongue of ice flowing along the mountainous divide between the South 

 Isortok and the Kangerdlugsuatsiak fiords in brave negligence of the 

 obstructing peaks and soliciting fiords. It may be interesting to com- 

 pare this with the accompanying photographic reproduction of the 

 British Admiralty chart (based on the Danish Government Surveys) of 



632 



