192 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



1 : 200,000, aud the geological formations are shown in colour. Special maps 

 illustrating glacial features were also given in the " Guide de I'excursion au 

 Spitzberg," Stockholm, 1910. 



The excursion was planned so as to include some seventy geologists, who 

 were provided for, in a manner beyond all praise, within the narrow limits of 

 the Molus, a Baltic passenger-steamer of 870 tons. The very closeness of the 

 quarters, and the constant and cheerful intercourse along the decks and 

 passage-ways, contributed to bring the representatives of sixteen nations into 

 the most friendly terms with one another. It must suffice to mention among 

 the glacialists present, after our universally respected leader, the names of 

 Lamplugh, Penck, Tarr, and Wahnschaffe. Yet it is hard to omit such 

 geologists as Credner, De Margerie, Mattirolo, Eeusch, Rothpletz, and 

 Salomon, or such geographers as Cholnoky and Sapper, whose wide knowledge 

 of other lands did so much to illustrate the special features seen in 

 Spitsbergen. One would like to name at least twenty others to whom warm 

 thanks are due for their helpful co-operation in the Arctic seas. 



Though the actual visit to the Ice Fjord occupied only eight days, in such 

 company any hour of the twenty-four might be turned to profitable account. 

 In spite of considerable difficulties with fog, and with the abundant drift- 

 ice set free from the polar pack in 1910, the great sea-inlet was entered on 

 the night of August 2nd, after a voyage of five days from the Norwegian port 

 of Narvik. The steamer had passed in sunlight close along the coast of 

 Bear Island. The study of Spitsbergen was carried on under an almost 

 cloudless sky ; and the continuous daylight enabled expeditious to be made on 

 shore at such times as a landing-place was at hand. One of the most 

 successful excursions, that to the Nordenskiold Glacier in Billen Bay, in 

 latitude 78 '40' K, was carried out while \X\q JEolus yNS& being floated off a 

 fluvio-glacial mud-bank between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. 



The steamer, moreover, was brought out of the Ice Fjord just in time, 

 when the pack-ice drove more thickly against the southern harbour-mouths. 

 The movement of this sea-ice, the frequent contact with it during a sinuous 

 and wary course, and the great roll of the open water when our way was 

 once more free for Norway, formed memorable features in themselves. 

 Phenomena of glacial weathering were conspicuous all down the Norwegian 

 coast to Trondhjem, where the eighteen days at sea came to an end. On the 



O ^ 



way to Stockholm, the rocky mass of Areskutan in Jamtland was ascended, a 

 huge compound roclie moutonnee, 4,000 feet above the lowland, and bearing 

 evidence over all its slopes of the great ice- stream that once flowed across it, 

 not from the neighlsouriug divide which forms the frontier, but from a snow- 

 dome farther north. Hence even here we were reminded of Ireland, with 



