244 THE JOURNAL OF GEOLOGY. 



is much more powerful than the ice. Where the two unite their 

 action, the sea leaves the more conspicuous records. The waters 

 are active and aggressive, while the glacier is passive. Where 

 the glacier enters the ocean its records are at once modified and 

 to a great extent obliterated. The presence of large bowlders 

 in marine sediments, or in gravels and sands along the coast is 

 about all the evidence of glacial action that can be expected 

 under the conditions referred to. Where the swift streams from 

 the Malaspina glacier enter the ocean the supremacy of the 

 waves, tides, and currents is even more marked. The streams 

 are immediately turned aside by the accumulation of sand bars 

 across their mouths, and nothing of the nature of stream-worn 

 channels beneath the level of the ocean can exist. All of the 

 deposits along the immediate shore between the Yahtse and 

 Yakutat bay have the characteristic topographic features result- 

 ing from the action of waves and currents and do not even 

 suggest the proximity of a great glacier. 



Recent advance. — On the eastern margin of Malaspina glacier, 

 about four miles north of Point Manby, there is a locality where 

 the ice has recently advanced into the dense forest and cut 

 scores of great spruce trees short off and piled them in confused 

 heaps. After this advance the ice retreated, leaving the surface 

 strewn with irregular heaps of bowlders and stones and inclosing 

 many basins which, at the time of our visit, were full to the 

 brim. The glacier during its advance plowed up a ridge of blue 

 clay in front of it, thus revealing in a very satisfactory manner 

 the character of the strata on which it rests. The clay is 

 thickly charged with sea-shells of living species, proving that 

 the glacier, during its former great advance, probably extended 

 to the ocean, and that a rise of the land has subsequently 

 occurred. This is in harmony with many other observations 

 which show that the coast adjacent to Malaspina glacier is now 

 rising. The blue color of the subglacial strata is in marked 

 contrast with the browns and yellows of the moraines left on its 

 surface by the retreating ice, which, in common with the fringing 

 moraines still resting on the glacier, show considerable weather- 



