THE EVIDENCE AS TO RECENT ADVANCE. 261 



wide the ice-sheet has recently extended beyond the outermost limit 

 of the land. Where did it stop ? 



Recent Advance. 



In the moraine near the sea end of the northern arm of Cornell glacier 

 (north side) marine shells were found at an elevation of 50 feet above 

 the sea and in such a position that they must have been brought there 

 by the ice-. The shells are of species now living in the fiord, and include 

 Saxicava, Mya, etcetera. That they were not brought there by animals 

 is proved by their abundance, and moreover by the fact that they were 

 found embedded in the boulder clay of the moraine. This point also 

 proves that they were not accumulated here by a change in land level. 

 Whatever their sources, they were brought to these places by the same 

 cause that built the moraine, and this is known to be the ice. 



Mr E. M. Kindle later studied these is some detail and searched for 

 them el <ewhere. He was successful in finding them at an elevation of 

 586 feet above sealevel, at a distance of from 4 to 5 miles from the sea ; 

 and not only did he find them in the moraine, but also in the ice itself. 

 Some were whole, but most of the specimens were fragments. 



These observations confirm the conclusion that the ice is now advanc- 

 ing over an old seabottom at a distance of several miles from the present 

 margin. Whether this means that the glacier is now removing fossilifer- 

 ous preglacial beds, or whether some recent retreat has caused the fiord 

 to reach some miles further inland than now, cannot be definitely stated. 

 The latter seems the more probable, because it is difficult to believe that 

 during all the time during which the ice has occupied this fiord, scouring 

 the rocks of its margin to a depth below the zone of decay and rounding 

 them to roches mountonnees forms, there should have been any of the soft- 

 beds of the seabottom left. This of course is possible, but a slight retreat 

 would equally and more naturally account for the phenomena. 



There is apparently less energy of movement in the Cornell glacier 

 than in glaciers in some other parts of the Greenland coast. It is possible 

 that there is some topographic cause for this. If, for instance, the head of 

 the fiord at the present margin of the glacier is not far from the divide, 

 a very slight change in the supply may make a marked difference in the 

 rate of advance of the glacier, so that even with slight variations in ice 

 supply there may be marked changes in the glacier front. That there is 

 some such topographic peculiarity as this is indicated by the surface of 

 the glacier, which is elevated into numerous domes, evidently where hill- 

 tops lie buried beneath it. At present these are overridden; soon this 



