878 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 
is evidence of no more than a very moderate increase beyond its 
present limits, and between the valley glaciers which existed at 
the time of the greatest extension of which there is record, there 
often remained peaks or even considerable areas altogether free 
from moving ice. But there are other areas where the surface 
affords no evidence that the ice-cap was ever extended much 
beyond its present limit. Professor Chamberlin has called attention 
to the existence of a small driftless area*™ on the east side of Bow- 
doin Bay, reaching almost to the edge of the present ice-cap, basing 
his determination, not on topography alone, but on the absence 
of drift, and on the presence of a great body of earthy matter 
resulting from the decomposition of the underlying rock. 
The conclusions reached by Professor Chamberlin last year dur- 
ing his voyage in the Falcon, viz: (1) that there are considerable 
stretches of the west coast of Greenland which have never been 
glaciated, or at any rate not glaciated within any time so recent 
as the later epochs of our own glacial period; and (2) that the 
ice-cap of Greenland—in the vicinity of Inglefield Gulf—was 
never greatly more extended than at present, or at least that it 
has not been notably extended within recent times, seem to me 
to be the only conclusions to which such study as is possible in 
such a voyage can lead. 
This condition of things on the Greenland coast is not with- 
out its parallel on the east coast of America (Ellsmere Land, 
North Devon, Baffin Land, EWC. )). This coast was seen at 
intervals from latitude 78° 45’ to latitude 71° 30’. Within 
this distance there are places where the topography is such as 
to suggest that the coast has not been glaciated or at least not 
in recent times. This is true, for example, of some parts of 
Bylot Island, latitude 73°, and perhaps more conspicuously of 
a considerable stretch of the mainland coast in the vicinity of 
Dexterity Harbor, the latitude of which was not exactly deter- 
mined, but which is not far from 72°. It cannot be asserted, on 
the basis of present evidence, that there are extensive areas in 
either of these positions which have altogether escaped the ice, 
tBulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. VI, p. 818. 
