854 STUDIES FOR STUDENTS 



"In September, 1882, I visited Tolstoi Mys, a precipitous 

 cliff near the southeastern extremit}' of Bering Island. At the 

 foot of it I found large masses of rock and stone which had 

 evidently fallen down during the year. Most of them were 

 considerably more than six feet in diameter, and showed no 

 trace of disintegration. The following spring, April 1883, when 

 I revisited the place I found that the rocks had split up into 

 innumerable fragments, cube-shaped, sharp-edged, and of a very 

 uniform size, about two inches. The}- had not yet fallen to 

 pieces, the rocks still retaining their original shape. I may 

 remark, however, that the weather was still freezing when I was 

 there. The winter was not one of great severity and several 

 thawing spells broke its continuit}-. These cubic fragments did 

 not seem to split up any further, for everywhere on the islands 

 where the rock consisted of the coarse sandstone, as in this 

 place, the talus consisted of these sharp-edged stones." 



Ice acts as an agent of disintegration in still other ways than 

 that mentioned above. Glaciers and their attendant phenomena 

 have, however, been so thoroughly discussed of late in the 

 columns of this and allied journals that my remarks upon the 

 subject may here be very brief. The moving glacier transports 

 more or less rock debris fallen upon it from the hills on either 

 hand or picked from the surfaces over which it flows. Those 

 materials which are carried upon the surface, or frozen in the 

 upper portions of its mass, may be but transported to the lower 

 levels, where, the temperature being sufficient, the ice is melted 

 and deposits its load in the form of a moraine. Those which 

 become frozen into the ice-sheet at its under surface are crowded, 

 as the glacier moves onward with all the weight of the overl3dng 

 mass and all the resistless energy of the ice behind, over the sur- 

 face of the underlying rocks. In virtue of this material, this sand, 

 gravel and bowlder aggregate, the glaciers become converted 

 into what we may compare to extremely coarse files, to tear away 

 the rocks over which they pass and grind and crush them into 

 detritus of varying degrees of fineness. The small streams which 

 originate from the melting of these glaciers become, hence, not 



