JONE 15, 1900.] 



SGIENGE. 



957 



100 such cones along a 20 mile fissure. At some 

 points, the lava has flowed quietly from fissures 

 without forming cones or craters. Lava sheets 

 and streams, sometimes scores of miles in 

 length, are as barren as the domes of ice and 

 snow. The more viscous flows have steep 

 borders, so that they rise in ragged ridges, im- 

 passable from being covered with loose clinkery 

 fragments. The more fluid flows have formed 

 smooth and nearly level fields, except that 

 their surface is here and there disturbed by ir- 

 regular subsidence, or broken by great cracks 

 which turn back the traveler. Secondary 

 craters are numerous on certain flows, some- 

 times to the number of hundreds crowded to- 

 gether, as if the flow had run over a marsh or 

 lake. Parts of the plateau are covered with 

 drifting sand, swept about in blinding storms. 

 The whole island has been deeply covered by 

 an ice sheet (except where an occasional vol- 

 canic cone rose as a ' niinatuk ' or island), as is 

 proved by abundant striations, morainic de- 

 posits and transported boulders, save over some 

 5000 square miles where the glaciated surface 

 has been buried under the more recent lavas. 

 Lakes of glacial origin are numerous. Sheets 

 of ice and snow to-day cover about an eighth 

 of the island area, mostly as mantles over the 

 domes of the plateau from which a few glacial 

 arms descend to lower levels. 



The lowlands are of small extent. They con- 

 sist of narrow coastal plains (strips of sea bot- 

 tom revealed by recent elevation) or of fluvia- 

 tile plains built forward by waste-laden glacial 

 rivers. Two elevated shore lines on the inner 

 margin of the coastal plains stand at heights of 

 250 and 125 feet, marked by clifls, caves and 

 beaches ; the strata of these plains contain ma- 

 rine shells. The fluviatile plains or ' sandr ' 

 are chiefly developed on the southern coast, 

 where the rainfall is two or three times heavier 

 than in the north. Here one finds all the phe- 

 nomena of aggrading braided rivers ; a single 

 glacial torrent may, on emerging from the high- 

 land, split into a hundred shifting channels, 

 with islands of sand and clay occupying the 

 meshes of the network. The rivers are exposed 

 to ' ice-floods ' when the glaciers of the high- 

 land domes are melted by volcanic heat ; over- 

 whelming turbid torrents then bear huge ice 



fragments and abundant rock waste down to 

 the sea. The southern coast has been rendered 

 harborless by the growth of the 'sandr,' and 

 the shore is frequently bordered by off-shore 

 sand reefs, built by the heavy surf. Elsewhere 

 the coast is extremely irregular, bold headlands 

 projecting between long fiords, into which the 

 streams from the uplands fall in high cascades. 

 Eivers of clear ' mountain water ' have not yet 

 formed important delta plains ; but where the 

 rivers bring down 'glacial water,' the fiords 

 are shoaled and extensive delta plains occupy 

 their heads. 



Settlements are limited to the lowlands, where 

 the people pasture cattle and sheep on the 

 plains, catch birds on the clifls, and take fish 

 from the sea. But besides suffering the disad- 

 vantages of an inclement climate, the lowlands 

 are exposed to lava floods which bury the 

 flelds, to river floods which lay them waste, 

 and to ash showers which poison the pastures, 

 causing famine and death to beast and man. 

 It is indeed curious that a people brave enough 

 to discover distant Iceland in a stormy sea, 

 hardy enough to inhabit it for a thousand years, 

 and intelligent enough to develop a remarkable 

 literature, should not have had enterprise 

 enough to leave the island for a more favorable 

 home. Evidently the world is not in the ' free 

 market ' that the older economists supposed. 

 W. M. Davis. 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS. 



Aberdeen University, at its graduation 

 ceremony, conferred the degree of Doctor of 

 Laws on Professor Josiah Eoyce, of Harvard, 

 who had recently completed the second series 

 of Giffbrd Lectures before the university. 



Professor D. A. Kent, of the Iowa State 

 Agricultural College has been appointed by the 

 Sultan of Turkey, instructor of farming for the 

 Turkish Empire. 



Professor M. B. Brumbaugh, who holds 

 the chair of pedagogy at the University of 

 Pennsylvania, has been offered the office of 

 Superintendent of Instruction at Porto Rico. 

 It is understood that he will accept if he can 

 secure a leave of absence of four years from the' 

 University. 



