Trof. Nordenskiold — Expedition to Greenland, 363 



The border of the ice is, as indicated in the woodcuts, everywhere 

 sprinkled with smaller boulders, partly rounded, partly angular ; but 

 the number of these is so inconsiderable, that, when the ice retires, 

 they only give rise to a slope covered with boulders, not to a mo- 

 raine, similar, for example, to that which the little Assakak glacier in 

 Omenakfjord drives before iL The little earth-bank, which at most 

 places collects at the foot of the glacier, is frequently washed away 

 again by the glacier streams and rain. We often find at the foot 

 of the glacier, as indicated in Fig. 2, ponds or lakes in which a fresh- 

 water glacial clay, containing angular stone blocks, scattered around 

 by small icebergs, is deposited. 



It is a common error among geologists to consider the Swiss 

 glaciers as representing on a small scale the inland ice of Greenland, 

 or the inland ice which once covered Scandinavia.^ The real glacier 

 bears the same relation to inland ice which a rapid river or brook 

 does to an extensive and calm lake. While the glacier is in perpetual 

 motion, the frozen water of the inland ice, like the water of a lake, is 

 comparatively at rest, excepting in those places where it streams out 

 into the sea by vast but short glaciers. If one of these glaciers, 

 through which the ice-lake falls out into the sea, pass over smooth 

 ground where the ocean's bottom gradually changes into land without 

 any steep breaks, steep precipitous glaciers are produced, from which 



k 



i 



I 

 I 



'A 



I 



•t 



Fig. 4. Inland ice extending into the sea and terminating in a steep edge, 1 00 to 200 feet high. 



indeed large ice-masses fall down, but do not give rise to any real 

 iceberg. But if the mouth be narrow, the depth of the outlying sea 

 great, and the inclination of the shore considerable, the result will 



protected by a layer of water, clay, or sand, from the destructive effects of frost, and 

 more especially from those of lichens. The finest scratches disappear in a few years 

 from a mountain slab, the position of which is favourable to lichen vegetation, but are on 

 the contrary preserved where lichen vegetation cannot develops itself — as for example, 

 when the rock is for a time in the spring covered with water. 



' Switzerland was probably never quite covered with real inland ice, its glaciers 

 have only been considerably more extensive than they now are. 



