736 COL. H. W. FEILDEN ON THE GLACIAL GEOLOGY [Nov. 1 896, 



laid bare, ice-worn surfaces and striations. Now, as the striae on the 

 limestone-rock of this island are as fresh-looking as if they had just 

 been made, I am at a loss to understand how this can be, if they are 

 due to the eifects of land-ice. If so, how great the changes which 

 these striae must have encountered ! First, what is now the water- 

 way of Smith Sound must have been occupied by land-ice, then it 

 must have disappeared, and the land must have sunk sufficiently at 

 least to allow of the highest terrace being formed, which would be a 

 submergence of 300 feet. Then followed a period of emergence, 

 during all which time the island has been undergoing contact with 

 floating ice, and yet we are asked to believe that the scratchings of 

 the former ice-sheet have remained on the rock as fresh as they appear 

 on the specimen that I have now in my hand ! It seems more 

 likely that the glaciation and striation went on simultaneously with 

 the emergence of the island from the sea, and that they are the 

 result of floating ice pushing over or along the island. 



In Kostin Schar many of the islands and islets are connected 

 by ridges, and frequently one is able to walk from one island to 

 another over a causeway 1 mile, more or less, in length. These 

 causeways are covered with rounded stones and shingle, the 

 pushed-up floe-ice lying on either side like the pictures of the 

 4 passage through the Ked Sea ' in the books of our childhood. If 

 we examine such a causeway we find that it has no character in 

 common with a moraine, for the shingle is rounded by the action of 

 the sea, and is only a few feet in thickness at the most, while in 

 spots where the shingle does not lie the glaciated surface-rock 

 appears. Now, when we reach the end of a causeway and the base 

 of either of the connected islands, we not unfrequently find the floe- 

 ice pushing up the ridge and against the base of the island in a way 

 that shows it to have a scarping and destructive force. (See fig. 9, 

 p. 734.) We can point as evidence of this to the pieces of rock 

 and debris which have recently fallen from the escarpment of the 

 island on to the ice-floe, and to disjointed pieces of rock ready to 

 come away which are to be noticed at the meeting of the impinging 

 ice and the abruptly rising land-face. Moreover, as I have already 

 remarked, the surface of the ridge on which the edge or snout of 

 the floe-ice is pushed up is glaciated. 



I have seen similar glaciated, shingle-strewed ridges appearing 

 above the sea, with the pack-ice grounded and pushed up on either 

 side, in many other parts of the Arctic regions — Spitsbergen, for 

 instance. I have in my possession a photograph of a well-marked 

 ridge in Loom Bay, Spitsbergen (taken during Mr. B. Leigh Smith's 

 voyage to that country in 1873), which that distinguished Arctic 

 explorer gave me on his return. Being desirous of learning whether 

 the views of that highly qualified observer coincided with my own, 

 I recently communicated with him and received the following 

 reply : — ' I believe that the ridge in Loom Bay, Spitsbergen, of which 

 you send me a sketch, was formed by the ice grounding on each side 

 of a shallow, and forcing up the shingle from the bottom. There is a 

 strong tide running into and out of Loom Bay. In Hinlopen Straits 



