1894.] Geology and Paleontology. 1025 
That the cavity is the result of the action of water is undoubted, 
and three hypotheses are given as to the manner of erosion. (1) The 
water may have entered from above or laterally and slowly dissolved 
the gypsum. (2) The water may have entered from below through a 
fissure acting as a natural siphon. (3) There may exist, beneath the 
mass exploited, a subterranean stream flowing over a second deposit of 
gypsum. The second mass having been dissolved and carried away by 
the water would leave a cavity into which the first mass would fall. 
The cavern thus formed would fill with water percolating through the 
fissures, from which would result the phenomena of solution and curious 
recrystallization of gypsum observed on the roof and sides of the 
cloche. (Feuille des Jeunes Naturalitses, no date). 
The Malaspina Glacier.—The term Piedmont has been applied 
to glaciers formed on comparatively level ground at the bases of mount- 
ains where the ice is not confined by highlands. They are fed by 
Alpine glaciers which spread out and unite with each other on leaving 
the valleys through which they descend from snow fields at higher ele- 
vations. The only known example of this class is the Malaspina gla- 
cier which occurs in Alaska, on the plain intervening between the Mt. 
St. Elias range and the ocean. A detailed description of this phenom- 
enon by I. C. Russell was recently published, of which the following is 
an abstract. 
The Malaspina glacier extends westward from Yakutat Bay for 70 
miles, with an average breadth of 20 to 26 miles. — It is a nearly hori- 
zontal plateau of ice. The general elevation 5 or 6 miles from its 
outer border ‘is about 1,500 feet. It consists of three lobes, each of 
which is practically the expansion of a large tributary ice stream. The 
largest has an eastward flow toward Yakutat Bay, and is fed by the 
Seward glacier. It ends in a low frontal slope, while the southern bor- 
der skirts the coast and forms the Sitkagi bluffs. The middle lobe is 
the expanded terminus of the Agassiz glacier flowing toward the south- 
west. This lobe is complete, and is fringed all about its outer border 
by broad moraines. The third lobe results from the union of the 
Tyndall and Guyot glaciers; it has a general southward flow and 
pushes out into the ocean, breaking off forms of magnificent ice cliffs. 
On the north border of the glacier the surface-melting gives origin 
to hundreds of rills and rivulets of clear sparkling water which course 
along in channels of ice until they meet a crevasse or moulin and 
plunge down into the body of the glacier to join the drainage beneath. 
In the southern b portion of the glacier abandoned tunnels 10 to 15 feet 
