206 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



.applied to it. These things are short, straight, rodHke reUef figures 

 usually single but often crossed and in radiating fasces. They are 

 large and small and lie at all angles with reference to the slope 

 of the strand or of the bottom. If they are accompanied by parallel 

 channelings or grooves, the " Fucoides " may lie between them or 

 even upon them at every angle. They therefore can have nothing 

 to do with any tidal flow or other mechanical movement of the 

 waters which would have the power to arrange loose material lying 

 on the bottom or on the beach. I have troubled a great many of 

 my colleagues by asking of them an opinion as to the nature of these 

 objects, and I have profited very*much by a suggestion made to me 

 by Prof. J. B. Woodworth. Professor Woodworth has intimated 

 that these rodlike grooves might well have been produced at the 

 bottom of the shallow water through the formation of ground ice ; 

 that the rods, independently or in mass, crossing and radiating, are 

 directly comparable to ground-ice formation, and as a result of fur- 

 ther study of ground-ice phenomena, I am confirmed in my belief 

 that his intimations are sound. If this is a fair deduction, we may 

 be confronted here with preliminary proof of seasonal or climatic 

 freezing in the Portage ocean. The inference is confirmed by the 

 character of the longitudinal strand channelings. The presence of 

 ice and the moving of shore ice along the strand, its shoving up or 

 its dragging down, are clearly indicated by these phenomena and 

 may well be called upon and account for all the parallel striated sur- 

 face to which we have referred, and very particularly to that illus- 

 trated on plates 21 and 22, where two striated grooves lie in the 

 mud, commingled with the crystals of ground-ice. 



The competency of ground or anchor-ice to produce such rodlike 

 crystallizations, would seem reasonably evident from the discussions 

 which have been given by various authors, and I shall take this 

 occasion to quote somewhat from the volume by Doctor Barnes on 

 " Ice Formation," with special reference to anchor-ice and frazil.^ 

 This spicular ice, in the opinion of not only the author cited but of 

 other writers, forms at the bottom under varying physical condi- 

 tions, and the fact that it may vary in respect to the size of the 

 crystals or crystal groups formed, is emphasized at various points in 

 this work. It is frankly to be admitted that no writer has had occa- 

 sion to record observations on this spicular structure in which the 

 crystallizing rods attain the size that are indicated for Fucoides, 

 usually the spicules being fine and massed together in anchor-ice 



'John Wiley & Sons, New York. 1906. 



