io6 /■ G. ANDERSSON 



A note on "flowing soils" is also cited by James Geikie^ from 

 the arctic part of the American continent. The observation was 

 made by Sir Edward Belcher on Buckingham Island in 77° N. L. 

 He ascended a hill 200 feet above the sea to make observations, 

 and found the soil well frozen and firm and covered with a slight 

 crust of snow. But as the power of the sun increased toward noon, 

 the snow disappeared. 



As noon passed the soil in all the hollows or small watercourses became 

 semifluid, and very uncomfortable to walk on or sink into. At the edge of the 

 southern bank the mud could be seen actually flowing, reminding one more 

 of an asphalt bank in a tropical region than our position in 77^ 10' N. The 

 entire slope, in consequence of the thaw, had become a fluid moving chute of 

 debris for at least one foot in depth. ^ 



Spitzbergen. — During the arctic expedition of 1898, under the 

 command of Professor A. G. Nathorst, when I made my first acquaint- 

 ance with the sohfluction in Bear Island, I also had opportunity 

 to see some phenomena of this kind in Spitzbergen, where they 

 wTre studied somewhat more in detail in the neighborhood of Hecla 

 Cove, in Treusenberg Bay by my companions G. Andersson, H. 

 Hesselman, and A. Hamberg. The following year, 1899, Dr. Th. 

 Wulff made some observations on the same phenomenon in the 

 first-named place and in Green Harbor in the Ice Fiord. ^ 



Recently Professor DeGeer has given a brief account of his 

 researches on moving slopes made during several expeditions to 

 Spitzbergen, partly long before the observations mentioned above. ^ 

 DeGeer has noticed the phenomenon in several localities in the 

 Ice Fiord region, as at the Wahlenberg glacier, at Temple Bay, 

 where the cover of vegetation had got dispersed by a mass of moving 

 soil, and at Cape Thordsen. At the last-mentioned place a small 

 railroad was built many years ago (1872) for mining purposes. 

 Ten years later the railroad could still be used, but in 1896 De Geer 

 found it to be greatly distorted by the effect of the moving soil. 



De Geer points out that the waste-sheet generally* moves over 

 a bedding of frozen soil, and that also regelation may act in the 

 displacement of the moving masses. 



^Op. cit., pp. 387, 388. 



^The Last of the Arctic Voyages, Vol. I, p. 306. 



3Th. Wulff, Botariische Beobachtungen aus Spitzbergen (Lund, 1902), pp. 85, 86. 



4Geologiska Foreningen i Stockholm Forhandlingar, 1904, pp. 465-66. 



