188 
RED SNOW. 
boat-hook; and through the clear liquid I could see 
that a sort of beveling prevented the ice-mass from 
actual contact with the bottom. 
Our very limited time prevented me from tracing 
this glacier up to its trough, my entire attention being 
occupied with its presenting face. Captain De Haven, 
who walked for a mile and a half up the valley, de- 
scribed it to me as rapidly diminishing in size, and de- 
riving contributions from the ice-streams of several 
minor valleys. 
I made a careful sketch of the configuration of this 
cove. Sandstones and coarse conglomerates, rounded 
porphyritic quartzes and altered slates, with green- 
stone and amygdaloids, chlorites and actinolites, &c., 
were found freely among the loose material spread out 
over the shore. The detritus from the cliffs was ex- 
cessive, and the effect of frost as a degrading agent 
strikingly manifest. 
But the object which seemed to usurp the undi- 
vided attention of our party was the red snow. It 
abounded in the depressions between the slopes of de- 
posited detritus, and wherever a protected or depend- 
ant hollow gave protection from excessive wind or 
thaw. It was never seen unless in association with 
foreign matter, such as the fronds of lichens or fila- 
ments of moss. Its surface was always contaminated 
by these accumulations, and I observed that the color 
of the Protococcus was most decided when they were 
in greatest abundance. This I mention, not for its 
bearing upon the question whether unmixed snow can 
act as a vegetative matrix, but as indicating, for the 
locality in question, an adventitious source for the sup- 
ply of ammonia. I may say, while upon the subject 
of this interesting production, that I subsequently col- 
