RAMSAY AND EVANS. — OBSERVATIONS IN GEOLOGY. 75 



/. What is the appearance of the surface of such glaciers. 

 Are they crevassed in the interior of the country, that is, traversed 

 by fissures, large and small, like the Alpine glaciers. Are there 

 any crevasses traversing the surface of the ice in cases where 

 it passes out far seaward. 



g. To make, if possible, observations on the temperature of the 

 ice at the surface, and at various depths below the surface, for 

 the purpose of discovering to what depth the ice is affected by the 

 external temperature of the air. It is usually stated that all 

 glacier ice below a shallow variable depth is just about the 

 temperature of 32° Fahr., and therefore in part always passing 

 into the state of fluid water. This by some has been doubted 

 with regard to the Swiss glaciers in winter. It is stated that 

 streams of water flow all the year round from underneath the ends 

 of Greenland glaciers, which are charged with glacier mud, and 

 so to speak, boil up with the freshwater from the ends of glaciers 

 that pass out to sea all the year. If so, does the quantity of 

 freshwater and mud seem to decrease in winter. 



h. It has been stated by Dr. Sutherland that the surface ice of 

 the Greenland glaciers of Melville Bay, &c., for a depth of 8 or 

 10 feet is more solidly frozen than the underlying strata of ice, 

 because of the influence at the surface of the cold air ; and that 

 the underlying ice, having the temperature of ordinary deep glacier 

 ice (about 32°), flows faster than the overlying thoroughly frozen 

 stratum, and that this upper stratum, adhering to and being 

 dragged unwillingly onward by the underlying more rapidly 

 moving ice, decrepitates and is shattered because of its solidity 

 and power of resistance to the onward motion of the underlying 

 more rapidly moving body of melting ice. 



Further observations on this point are desirable. 



i. Measurements actual or approximate of the size of boulders 

 on glaciers are desirable, and notes of the various kinds of rocks 

 that form surface moraines. Sketches of such boulders would be 

 sometimes of value. 



k. It has been stated that the solid Greenland rocks which form 

 the surface of the country are not grooved and striated like the 

 rocks afiected by old and modern Alpine glaciers, or like the rocks 

 of Scotland, the North of England, and Wales,which, like much of 

 modern Greenland, are believed to have once been buried under 

 universal thick sheets of glacier ice of what is called the Glacial 

 Epoch. The reason given for this is that the whole or most of 

 Greenland, being or having been entirely covered by glacier ice, 

 no moraine matter from bare cliffs fell on the surface of the glaciers, 

 and that therefore no stones and . other glaciers debris found its 

 way from the sides of glaciers and through crevasses to the 

 bottom of the ice, by means of which their rocky floors could be 

 grooved and scratched because of the great superincumbent pres- 

 sure of the moving ice-flow. The more northern rock surfaces 

 of Greenland have therefore been said to be ice-polishgd and 

 moutounee, but not grooved and scratched. Is this the case. 



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