GLACIAL STUDIES IN GREENLAND. ZO 
series has undergone, for, while it is faulted in some places and 
gently tilted generally, it is not crumpled nor folded and shows 
no signs of destructive metamorphic changes. While it is by no 
means safe to assume the entire absence of fossils 7 while, indeed, 
it is perhaps safer to assume their presence, they are very rare, 
or else circumscribed in their distribution within the region 
studied; for, though attention was chiefly absorbed by the gla- 
cial phenomena, it was incidentally necessary to traverse much 
territory occupied by the sedimentary rocks, and their exposure 
is so ample as to afford great facilities for observation. Vegeta- 
tion is not by any means absent, but it is so scattered as to offer 
practically no concealment of the surface. The intense frost has 
split the surface beds into innumerable slabs which lie in the 
greatest profusion over the surface. At the same time there has 
been very little disintegration of rock into soil, or else it has 
been washed away, and hence almost no concealment from that 
source. While in some parts drift from the crystalline series 
interposes some concealment, the extent of this is limited. The 
importance of finding a sufficient number of fossils to identify the 
formations was fully realized and a fairly constant outlook for 
them was maintained, but without result. All others who have 
visited the region have been, so far as I can learn, equally unsuc- 
cessful. There remain, however, grounds for hope that sufficient 
fossils will ultimately be found to determine the age of the for- 
mations. They have usually been referred, with doubt, to the 
Tertiary, because of the presence of that series, with a similar 
constitution, in the Disco region. So far as I can see, they 
might, with equal plausibility, be referred to an earlier age. 
The area occupied by the clastic series is only imperfectly 
known. The ice mantle of Prudhoe Land and the great inland 
sheet creep out upon it and conceal its inland limit in part. But 
such inferences as can be drawn from the constitution of the drift 
point to a limit at no great distance back from the shore. This 
is strongly supported by the fact that the arms of Inglefield Gulf 
reach the crystalline series and even the gulf coast is in part 
formed by it. The head of Bowdoin Bay, for instance, has crys- 
