62 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 
acquaintance. There was certainly also a lack of suggestive 
associations; for asa relatively slender column standing only a 
few miles from the edge of the great ice sheet it awakens in the 
glacialist thoughts lying in quite opposite thermal relations. 
What does this column so situated signify respecting the former 
extension of the ice? There are better reasons than the tem- 
_ perature associations of his majesty for thinking that the ice may 
never have passed over the Thumb since its isolation. Without 
fuller knowledge, however, there is an open alternative between 
the view that exfoliation has developed the monument out of a 
peak or promontory since the ice passed over it and the view 
that the ice never advanced so far. Melville Monument, a some- 
what similar rocky column rising out of the bay off the face of 
the ice border a degree farther north, presents a similar alterna- 
tive, as do also some of the rather rugged islands along the coast, 
though the majority of these are fluent in contour, and carry 
implications of precisely the opposite kind. 
Bee aning: just beyond the Devil’s Thumb, at about latitude 
74° 30’, the coast of Melville Bay, for about 150 miles, is formed 
much more largely of ice than of land. A survey has recently 
been made by Mr. Astrup, of Lieutenant Peary’s party, which 
will, when published, add greatly to the existing knowledge of 
this remarkable coast, which is laid down on our charts with con- 
fessed inaccuracy. Not to anticipate this, it may be safely affirmed, 
on the basis of passing observation, under the favorable con- 
ditions of our voyage, that while the coast is not the uninter- 
rupted ice-wall that sailors sometimes represent it (due, perhaps, 
to the deceptiveness of its frequent and phenomenal mirages) 
its most dominant and interesting feature is the edge of the 
great ice-field broken into vertical sea cliffs as it pushes out into 
the margin of the bay. These cliffs, though very extended, are 
not wholly continuous. They are occasionally interrupted, not 
only by promontories standing forth from the base of the ice 
slope like dormer windows at the eaves of a roof, but also by 
lower areas whose freedom from ice is less obviously due to 
altitude. These interruptions, however, are usually limited in 
