60 ME. F. DEBEXHAM OX A XEW [vol. lxXV r 



some 4 feet and happening to taste a fragment from that zone, we 

 found that we had passed into true ice without noticing the junc- 

 tion. Careful examination and tasting showed that the salt was 

 only about 2 feet thick at that point, and was resting on perfectly- 

 clear solid ice. It was not bedded, and there was practically no 

 silt with it, although the top of the cone had a slight covering of 

 gravel. It should be remarked that several of the adjacent mounds 

 were also resting upon ice, which could be none other than the 

 original ice of the mass that carried the erratics, the mirabilite, and 

 the marine muds. 



The deposit of salt was, therefore, exactly comparable to those 

 found on the moving ice in the bay between Black and "White 

 Islands. 



The stratified bed of the salt mentioned by Mr. Ferrar in the 

 moraines on the west side of the Sound (Gri) was not found by us ; 

 but a very similar one some miles to the south of that point was 

 carefully examined (Gr). It was in the ice-borne moraine-belt along 

 the coast between Blue Glacier and the Lower Koettlitz Glacier, and 

 was seen from a distance of several hundred yards as a continuous 

 white band in the black moraine. It was cropping out on the 

 side of a small valley which had been thawed out of the underlying 

 ice by a small stream, and appeared as an almost horizontal bed about 

 2 feet thick, with a definite junction between the bed and the dirt- 

 strewn ice. The moraine itself was of rather fine material, with 

 a proportion of fine mud ; the latter, frozen into the matrix of ice, 

 resisted all our attempts at digging a section with a geological 

 hammer. From measurements of the outcrop the deposit appeared 

 to be at least 40 feet long by 20 feet in width. The salt itself was 

 quite free from coarse silt, but contained a small proportion of very 

 fine mud scattered through it, which gave it a dirty appearance. 

 None of it was in clear crystalline blocks as at Cape Royds. On 

 analysis it proves to be almost entirely sodium sulphate, with 

 traces of potassium and of chloride, but the crystal-grains are 

 smaller anc], more desiccated than in the other cases. 



Summary of Occurrences. 



The raised deposits are, therefore, found in two distinct regions 

 in precisely similar circumstances, and it will be worth while 

 to note what other characteristics are common to these regions. 

 It will be convenient to speak of the ice-sheet in 75° lat. S. as the 

 Nan sen Sheet, as it is immediately under Mount Nansen, the 

 dominant mass of the neighbourhood. 



A glance at the map of South Victoria Land will show that, in 

 sailing southwards along the coast, a ship will pass three deep bays, 

 each of which is filled with thick ice, usua \\y called 'land-ice.' The 

 first of these is Lady Newnes Bay, about which little is known 

 except that the ice that fills it is much more massive than in the 

 other two cases, being up to 150 feet thick at the edge, or, roughly, 

 1000 feet in total thickness. 



