Vol. 54.] GEOLOGY 0¥ FEANZ JOSEF LAND. 643 



taking the temperature within a crevasse on Bruce Island, and, as 

 our results differ from similar observations by other writers, it may 

 be well to place them on record. Having made a hole through a 

 snow-bridge, we lowered a thermometer into a crevasse to a depth 

 of 3 feet, and then to 15 feet, leaving it for 5 minutes at each 

 depth; a register of -|-19° and +20°I'ahr. was obtained, while the 

 temperature in the air was +30°, with a warm sun shining. The 

 time was 2 p.m. 



During the whole of our journeys in Pranz Josef Land we never 

 saw any icebergs of the large size reported by both Payer ^ and 

 Leigh Smith ^ ; the former writer says that they averaged from 

 80 to 200 feet in height, and the latter speaks of them as from 

 150 to 250 feet high. The largest that we saw could not have 

 been more than from 50 to perhaps 80 feet above water, and even 

 these were tilted, and so appeared thicker than they really were. 

 Dr. Nansen saw nothing so large, although he passed very near to 

 where Payer saw his loftiest bergs. 



VI. Glacial and other Denudation. 



The evidences of glacial action as shown by the smoothing and. 

 planing of rocks are very few ; rochesmoutonnees and rounded 

 hills have not been met with. Only in the two valleys separating 

 Cape Plora from Cape Gertrude are there some loose blocks of basalt, 

 which are planed, polished, and somewhat scratched o;n their upper 

 sides, showing that they have been but little moved since their 

 grinding by the ice. These blocks are sufficiently raised above the 

 sea to be out of reach of floe-ice pressing upon the shore : they 

 are upon low and recently-raised beaches. 



No evidence has been obtained of the existence of anything that 

 could be definitely called till. 



The granite 'erratics' mentioned by Payer ^ as having been seen 

 attached to an iceberg may have been brought from a distance, or, 

 like the radiolarian chert, quartz, and chert-pebbles which I found 

 frozen to an iceberg, they may have been derived from Jurassic beds 

 in the immediate neighbourhood. Similar fragments of granite were 

 found by me on the beach-terraces of Cape Mary Harmsworth, 

 and one small piece at Cape Gertrude. Dr. Nansen tells me that 

 he thinks he saw granite in place on an island farther north. 

 I have never seen granite-pebbles in the Jurassic strata, but 

 quartzite-fragments are not uncommon, and having found both 

 together on the beaches I infer that they may have had a similar 

 origin. 



1 ' New Lands within the Arctic Circle,' vol. i, p. 16 & vol. ii, p. 141. 



2 Proc. Roy. Geogr. Soc. vol. iii (1881) pp. 131, 135. 



^ * New Lands within the Arctic Circle,' vol. ii, p. 157. 



