200 THOMAS C. CHAMBERLIN AND ROLLIN T. CHAMBERLIN 



wrought by the older general glaciations do not seriously mask the 

 distinctive work of the local glaciation that has followed and is, 

 in some part, in action still. Broad excavations of the initial 

 cirque type are common on the brows and slopes of the rounded 

 mountains and on the islands that fringe this coast and on the 

 mainland itself. They seemed to us clearly to be more common 

 on the eastward sides of the islands than on the westward. The 

 initial types are chiefly the products of modern action; indeed in 



Fig. 4. — Basins hollowed in a hillside by tiny glaciers. From the coast of Norway. 

 Photo, by R. T. C. 



many cases the basins are still occupied by the snow-ice mass to 

 which their shaping is due. The whole series taken together 

 show various stages of the work of snow accumulation and earth 

 excavation. Small, relatively wide basins, scooped broadly from 

 hillsides, are variously occupied or empty according to altitude, 

 latitude, or other condition favoring snow accretion or snow wastage. 

 Their dimensions range downward to hollows not unlike pits 

 on the brows of drift hills and upward to mountain cirques of 

 typical form and magnitude. They also range from mere cirque 

 heads to cirque heads with short glacial appendages and thence 

 on to longer and longer glacial tails until the peculiarities of the 



