92 
their occurrence. All of them were ob- 
tained from the moraine fringing the mar- 
gin of the ice cap along the base of the 
Nugsuak peninsula. The peninsula is a 
narrow mountainous tongue of land extend- 
ing a little south of west from the mainland. 
Glaciers extend down to the fjiords from 
the ice cap on either side of the Nugsuak 
peninsula, while along its eastern base the 
ice cap terminates generally in a gently 
sloping margin, but sometimes in vertical 
cliffs forty to eighty feet high, which face 
small ponded lakes. From the Cornell 
glacier the margin of the ice cap rises 
gradually for a distance of four or five 
miles until it reaches an elevation of about 
six hundred feet, and then gradually de- 
scends again toward the glacier entering 
the fjord to the north. The morainal 
material, which occurs everywhere except 
at the lakes, just at the edge of the ice, 
was found to contain shells or fragments of 
shells up to the highest elevation which it 
attains, about 590 feet, at a distance of 
about four or five miles from the coast. At 
some of the small lakes the ice cliffs show 
distinctly stratified ice which carries an 
abundance of débris in the lower layers. Shell 
fragments were observed in the face of one 
of these cliffs at an elevation of 390 feet 
above sea level. Broken shells were also 
observed in the morainal material which 
has been dumped on the surface of the ice 
at a few points, owing to the sharp dip of 
the ice strata which brings the lower débris- 
- carrying layers to the surface before they 
reach the outer margin of the melting ice. 
The following species have been identified 
in the material collected from the moraine: 
Saxicava arctica, Mya truncata, Macoma subu- 
losa, Balanus crenatus, Yoldia (Portlandica) 
arctica, Cardium ciliatum. 
Many of the shells from the moraine near 
the fjord, which have evidently been car- 
ried but a short distance, have been handled 
in a surprisingly delicate manner by the 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Vou. VI. No. 133. 
ice. The Macomias, which are so fragile 
as scarcely to allow removal from the soft 
clay without crushing, have in many cases 
escaped from the ice without the slightest 
injury. The only specimen of Yoldia found 
still retained the epidermis, and the valves 
remained attached. In following the mo- 
raine back from the fjord toward the higher 
land which separates the Cornell and the 
Wyckoff glacial basins, the shells in the mo- 
raine become more and more fragmentary 
and broken as the irregularity of the land 
topography underlying the ice, and the dis- 
tance which they have been transported, 
increases. 
The occurrence of these shells in the 
moraine and in the ice makes it clear that 
they have been picked up by the ice from 
an old sea bottom which is now occupied 
by the ice cap. From the position of the 
shells and the direction of the ice flow 
which has transported them, the sea must 
have extended up the fjord when the 
shells were living at least four or five 
miles beyond the present face of the 
glacier. There seems to be only two 
possible interpretations of the relation of 
these shells to the ice. They either be- 
long to a time previous to the beginning of 
extensive glaciation when the sea extended 
up the fjords as far as their slopes would 
permit, or they represent a retreat of the 
ice which allowed the sea to extend some 
miles up the fjord beyond its present 
limit, followed by a re-advance of the ice. 
If the former supposition be correct, the 
removal of shells must have been in prog- 
ress from the beginning of glaciation in the 
region to the present time. It would seem 
that so long a period of excavation by the 
ice would have exhausted the material from 
so limited a supply. According to this 
theory, morainal material formed at an 
earlier period, when the ice extended be- 
yond its present position, ought to contain 
shells as well as that now forming. I care- 
