part 2] -siode of tbanspobtation by ice. 57 



a large fish lying on a patch of silt just beneath the surface of the 

 ice. By careful chopping it was recovered fairly intact, and proved 

 to be about 20 inches long, but without a head. Beneath the skin, 

 which was hardly broken, the body consisted of a mixture of ice 

 and some greasy material, but the bones were quite well preserved. 

 It had certainly never been exposed to the atmosphere for any 

 length of time, or the greasy material would have disappeared. 

 A curious fact about this fish is that in all outward characteristics 

 it was similar to the one captured by the members of the Discovery 

 Expedition, also in a headless condition. It further appears to be 

 correlated with their discovery of several skeletons of the same 

 kind of fish in the ice near the point J) (fig. 1, p. 52). 



The position of this fish embedded in the ice, some 4 miles from 

 the end of the glacier and perhaps 15 feet above sea-level, presents 

 a problem very similar to that of the muds. 



It was much too big to be carried by any bird, and would be a 

 very clumsy object to be transported to that distance by a seal, 

 even if seals were known to be in the habit of carrying objects in 

 their mouths. By a stretch of the imagination, it is just possible to 

 suppose that the tish may have worked up some summer- thaw 

 stream to a distance of d miles, there to have met its end in the 

 jaws of a wandering seal, who, having eaten the head, left the 

 body to be frozen in. The only alternative, that it came up 

 through the ice from below, seems to me more possible. 



On returning from a journey up the Koettlitz Glacier we crossed 

 the Sound to Hut Point on the old ice all the way, the sea-ice 

 having then broken up. At the point (F) about a mile from the 

 westernmost Dailey Island, and a similar distance from the true 

 edge of the land-ice, we came upon the most remarkable instance 

 of uplifted sea-bottom that we had yet seen. The surface here 

 was perfectly level, and probably 8 to 10 feet above sea- level; at 

 this time it was covered with a few inches of recent sno,w, and our 

 attention was therefore easily caught by two or three small grey 

 mounds on the uniform white expanse. These turned out to be 

 masses of very large sponges, measuring up to a foot in diameter 

 in some cases, and entangled in the masses were the same shells and 

 marine remains as we have already noted in other instances. Again, 

 the most marked feature was the excessive fragility of the bulk of 

 the material. One specimen of a solitary coral was retrieved from 

 a mesh of spicules, and had a peduncle no thicker than a pin, so 

 that it did not long survive the vicissitudes of sledging over the 

 rough ice. The sponges were all in the position of growth, so far 

 as we could see, and there was a small amount of mud and silt with 

 and under them. The mounds were quite close together, as may 

 be seen from the photograph ( PI. IV, fig. 2), but the thick snow 

 effectually prevented us from seeing whether they were continuous 

 or not. This occurrence was most certainly in a position to which 

 no pushing action of the ice could possibly have raised it, and was 

 far too delicate to have withstood any but the gentlest method 

 of transportation. 



