222 LAMPLUGH : SHELLY MORAINE OF THE SEFSTROM GLACIER. 
The Sefstrom glacier affords the best-known instance of this 
rapid fluctuation. ^ When first examined by Prof. De Geer in 
1882, it ended Avell within its own inlet, a westerly branch of 
Ekman Ba}', with its sea-front about 2 miles distant from the 
waters of the main fiord. At this time it was flanked by a broad 
outwash plam of gravel and sand, which formed the side of the 
inlet up to the foot of the mountains, only the central portion of 
the glacier ending in the sea (see Fig. 2). 
When re-examined fourteen A'ears later, in 1896. it had 
undergone an astonishing change. The glacier had filled the 
bottom of its valley right up to the hills, burying the outwash 
plain, obliterating the inlet, and bulging out in a broad expanded 
lobe into Ekman Bay so far that its end had reached the western 
side of Cora Island, a small low islet h^ing barely a mile distant 
from the opposite or eastern side of the bay. The distance 
covered by this advance was rather more than 4 miles. That 
its spurt was by this time over, and that recession had already 
set in, was seen from the condition of another islet, Chert Island, 
near its southern margin, AAhich showed evidence of having been 
completely over\A helmed, but was now partly laid bare. 
The recession afterwards continued ; so that when Prof. De 
Geer renewed his investigation of the glacier in 1908, its main 
front of ice-cliffs between the two islands had fallen back at least 
a mile and a half, leaving an open anchorage for the ship at a 
spot where there Avas ice up to 300 feet above sea-level in 1896. 
It had broken back with a very irregular front, owing mainly, no 
doubt, to variation in the depth of the sea ; and the end which 
had been pushed on to Cora Island, being firmly aground in 
shallow water, stiU remained in position, but had been left 
isolated by the retreat of the main mass, so that there was a narrow 
sea-passage westward of the island between the glacier and its 
detached snout, bordered by great cliffs of ice on both sides. 
These successive developments are showTi in a large-scale (50 Jo (7) 
plan of the glacier prepared by Prof. De Geer for the " Guide," 
of which, by permission, a reduced copy is given in Fig. 2. 
I Other examples, including the Von Post, Wahlenberg, and Svea Glaciers, are discussed by Prof. 
De Geer in the "Guide " {op.cit.). Nordenskiold, many years ago, found similar indica- 
tions of rapid advance among the glaciers of Bell Sound ; Geol. Mag. dec. II., Vol. III. (1876), 
p. 18. Lament in 1860 described an abandoned shelly moraine oS the end of a glacier in 
Stor Fiord, Quart. Jour n. Geol. Soc, Vol. XVI., p. 431 ; and Feilden has recorded a similar 
moraine occurring in Green Harbour, Glacialisis' Mag., Vol. II (1894), p. 1. Garwood and 
Gregory's account of the Booming Glacier, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. LIV. (1898) p. 
207-8 is another illustration of an active Spitsbergen glacier. 
