J. Milne — Ice and Ice-ivork in Newfoundland. 409 



disturb the strata, and perhaps carry off a portion of the material 

 forming some bank on which it has happened to ground, but to 

 approach the land, as coast-ice does after leaving its birth-place, it is 

 for ever debarred. Carried along by a deep-sea current, with but 

 little care for wind or wave, it cleaves a course through ice and 

 water to more southern regions. 



The work done by a glacier is slow and steady. On its surface it 

 carries all that may fall upon it, whilst at its base it annually 

 smoothens for itself deeper and deeper the rocky bed on which 

 it rests. 



When floating-ice is pushed ashore, we have a somewhat similar 

 action ; but in addition to this steady pressure, coast-ice has another 

 mode of acting which is wanting in the glacier, viz, that of impact. 

 A faint conception of what this is may be derived from the accounts 

 we read of Arctic travel. ''The growling and roaring," " the crash of 

 meeting floes and fields of ice," "the broad fields of ice several 

 hundreds of miles in area broken up into countless floes," "the 

 hummocks and hills that are piled up under the tremendous 

 pressure," have all been spoken of. 



Scoresby gives a calculation of the blow which must be produced 

 by one of these immense fields of ice which he mentions, as being 

 equal to that of 10,000,000,000 tons. Now all these tremendous 

 blows delivered by ice-islands floating down upon each other must 

 be given in a similar manner to a rocky coast. 



After once seeing the broken masses of the icy "pavement" of these 

 Northern regions scouring along by cliffs and islands, jostling and 

 cannoning with all it meets as it rises and falls on the heaving swell, 

 one cannot help being impressed with the immense amount of work 

 that it is capable of performing. 



Possihility of a sequence in Ice-Action. — It has now been shown 

 how coast-ice may, to a certain extent, give a character to a coast- 

 line ; how it may, by impact, remove all asperities, and how, by 

 a steady pressure, it may groove and scratch, and even produce a 

 surface not unlike the roches moutonnees of the glaciers. We will 

 now consider whether those markings may be reasonably expected 

 to remain as permanencies. 



In Newfoundland, which appears to be a rising area, there is 

 every reason to suspect that many of the markings seen round the 

 coast, which have hitherto been attributed either to glaciers or 

 icebergs, have been impressed by coast-ice. Whatever the iceberg 

 may have done when the now dry surface was beneath the sea, on 

 emergence must in all probability have been obliterated, and the 

 surface remodelled by the action of the coast-ice. A striking in- 

 stance of this modelling of what is probably a rising area is seen at 

 Funk Island. This island lies almost 30 miles out in the Atlantic 

 to the East of Newfoundland. It is about half a mile in length, 

 very low and flat, and is situated right in the stream of the Arctic 

 ice. The northern end of the island, which has every year to face 

 this tremendous pressure of vast fields of ice, is visibly worn down 

 and covered with erratic boulders ; whilst the opposite extremity is 



