228 : Glacial Erosion in Norway. 
In connection with this paper, the observations of Herr Payer 
and other arctic explorers are important. The snow-line of Franz 
Joseph Land descends to within a thousand feet of the sea, and the 
numerous glaciers discharge great quantities of icebergs as they 
move down into the ocean. Payer says: “ However diligently I 
look for them, I never saw unmistakable traces of grinding and 
polishing of rocks by glacier-action.” 1 
Lieutenant Lockwood? found in central Grinnell Land a thick 
ice-cap, extending for a distance of from seventy to ninety miles, 
faced by an ice-wall of from 125 to 200 feet high, irrespective of 
topographical inequalities. It was free from rock debris, except in 
a valley confined by mountain-walls thousands of feet high. Along 
its foot there was almost an absence of morainic deposits, and even 
where present these were unimportant ridges. The general absence 
of rock and dirt in the arctic glaciers is a common subject of remark. 
The snow line in the high latitude of central Grinnell Land is 3,800 
feet above the sea, and the glaciation of the rock about the adjacent 
Lake Hazen (500 feet above tide) is not recent. 
In Spitzbergen, where the snow-line is much higher, striated 
rocks, according to Nordenksjold, occur only below 1,000 feet.’ 
The same holds true for Labrador, where the scratches are confined 
to the lower thousand feet, although the mountains rise to 6,000 
(Bell).* 
In the Antarctic regions, the officers of the “Challenger” 
remarked the absence of detritus in the icebergs and southern ice, 
although Wilkes and Ross saw rocks upon a few bergs. These 
last are supposed to have come from valleys in the voleanic moun- 
tains, 
Indeed, outside of valleys, explorers in high latitudes have not 
found, in the margins of such ice-caps visited, the tools capable of 
great erosion. The continental area of North America presents 
very much lower and less abrupt prominences than the reliefs of 
Greenland, Grinnell Land, Spitzbergen or Franz Joseph Land. 
Overhanging mountains seem to be necessary to supply glaciers 
with tools by which alone any abrasions can be accomplished, and 
1 New Lands within the Arctic Circle, 1872-74. 
Three Years of Arctic Service, 1881-4, Greely. 
3 See Geological Magazine, 1876. 
t Dr. Robert Bell, in Hudson’s Bay Expedition of 1884. 
