860 DR J. H. HARVEY PIRTE ON 



cliff, and in some of them, indeed, this is able to push its way beyond high-water 

 mark (see p. 849) ; but elsewhere the ground is high, rising in a sheer cliff from the 

 sea (see text-fig. 3), and the ice ends on land, with some fairly large terminal 

 moraines. At the base of Ferrier Peninsula the ice simply gets thinner and thinner, 

 finally dying out entirely, but with little or no moraine. It becomes continuous with 

 the glacier ending in the cove to the east of Cape Whitson and with those ending at 

 the head of Brown's Bay, 



Head of Broivns Bay. 



Here, at the head of the bay, we have an example of something like the real 



" piedmont " type of glacier or ice-sheet, — a continuous fringing glacier or ice-foot 



glacier linking up the three separate glaciers which converge into it. The westernmost 



of the three extends back up to the very summit of what is probably the highest hill 



in the island. 



Pirie Peninsula. 



This broad peninsula is fringed by glaciers well out towards its apex. Spurs of 

 rock divide the ice into several more or less separated parts, but the ice on one side is 

 continuous with that on the other through several cols. 



Ice-foot. 



This, the transition between land and sea ice, forms a low terrace round the land 

 just above sea-level. A better name would really be the " snow-foot," because it is 

 composed of snow-drift accumulation at the junction of the land-floe with the land, 

 although thin strata of ice do form in it, just as in the superficial layers of the glaciers. 

 In places also where the land-floe has broken up after the accumulation of an ice-foot, 

 so that it is washed by open sea for a time — and this may happen once or even 

 repeatedly at some parts throughout the course of the winter, — it becomes soaked by 

 spray and water if not washed away, and may actually become much more of an ^ce-foot 

 in character. 



Where the cliffs are steep and the water deep the ice-foot is only a very narrow 

 terrace, and at low tide there is a very distinct step down off it over the " tide crack" 

 on to the floe ice. Where the land slopes more gently and the water is shallow, the 

 transition from the sea ice to the land is almost imperceptible, and instead of one well- 

 defined tide crack there are a number of them extending over a distance of many yards. 

 At such places, as, for instance, at The Beach, the ice-foot left in summer, when the 

 sea ice broke up and drifted out, formed a broad terrace with a wall to the sea about 

 15 feet in height (Plate X. fig. 1). By the end of the summer this had nearly all melted 

 or been washed away. On rocky coasts the ice-foot was always much narrower and 

 usually of less height (see also Plate V. fig. 2). 



The action of the ice-foot on the shore must be, in the main, a protective one. As 

 a transport agent little evidence was seen at the South Orkneys that it was of great 



