548 Dr. E. L. Moss. Observations on Arctic Sea-water and Ice. 



the layers could not be decided upon at arm's length, and in getting 

 samples and measurements the easiest method of procedure was to 

 stick on pieces of paper and adjust them to the layers, by retiring to a 

 distance of 2<J or 30 yards. The thinnest strata observed occurred in 

 the sides of a water- worn ravine in a floeberg off Cape Rawson; in the 

 middle of the bank, where the sections were nearly vertical, they 

 measured 7 inches. An iceberg off Cape Napoleon had strata only 

 4 inches wide. The widest I have any notes of were in the top of 

 the cleft floeberg already described. Here they were 3 feet deep ; but, 

 28 feet lower down, the lowest distinguishable strata were 18 inches 

 deep. Although the extremes differed so widely, the great majority of 

 the stratifications showed layers between 10 and 15 inches wide. In 

 instances where stratification ceased abruptly, the ice immediately 

 beneath was a sort of conglomerate formed of masses broken from 

 older floes cemented together by frozen sea-water,* with differently 

 inclined lines of air-cells, and occasionally enclosing aggregations of 

 bright-yellow Diatomacece. One such aggregation from a floeberg 

 grounded on an island in Black Cliffs Bay, has been submitted to 

 Rev. Eugene O'Meara. He has identified the Diatomacece in it, and 

 informs me that they are all of decidedly marine growth. Stratifica- 

 tion was not distinguishable in the masses of which the conglomerates 

 were composed ; indeed, submersion appears to play an important 

 part in its obliteration. 



On the 28th March, 1876, I cut a pit through the snow on the top of 

 our watering berg and filled it in with minute-crystalled snow from a 

 little under the surface. On the 8th of May, the lower crystals were 

 adherent to the ice beneath, and had become distinctly larger and 

 granular, differing little from those in the undisturbed snow beside 

 them, which were by this time like small transparent hailstones, often 

 already grown together into rods and groups. The temperature of the 

 air in the meantime, though rising, had never reached 0° C, while the 

 ice yet retained much of the cold of early spring. 



A similar growth towards the cold, but upwards instead of down- 

 wards, takes place while the temperature of the air is below that of the 

 floes or the earth, and helps the wind to harden and crust the upper 

 snow. With a hope of testing this growth, two cubes were cut out of 

 the same block of snow, and made to weigh exactly 50 grms. each. 

 No. 1 was suspended level with the ground, and No. 2 4 feet 8 inches 

 above it, in a niche in a snow-house. They were then built up and 

 left for ten days, meantime the temperature of the air averaged 

 — 35°*5 C, while the ground under 5 feet 6 inches of snow was — 20 o, 6. 

 On re-weighing, No. 1 had lost 1*15 grms., and No. 2 had gained '3. 

 After the lapse of a second ten days, with an air temperature of 



* The " Porphyiitic ice " of Parry, 4th voyage, p. 88. 



