802 
MR J. M. WORDIE ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF PACK-ICE 
vertical series, and this latter position becomes the rule for further increase in 
thickness. 
Ice-flowers were a common feature whenever newly formed cracks and leads 
froze over in winter ; they were at their best when the temperature was below 
zero. They never remained perfect very long, however, for the clusters were 
generally rimed over in about twenty-four hours ; or, since very low temperatures 
were rarely of long duration in 1915, a certain amount of remelting soon 
took place. 
When ice-flowers were not present, young newly formed ice was always more or 
less soft and damp on the upper surface, owing to the temperature being generally 
higher than was conducive to their formation. On such a surface brine-bubbles 
were numerous, and were apparently potential nuclei for ice-flowers. Observations 
made on. these bubbles in the end of May showed that, from originally being small 
and somewhat elliptical, they grew to be nearly an inch in length. In the 
“wedges” the axis of the bubble ran parallel with the length of the wedge; but 
in the interspaces, and where there was no guiding structure such as the wedge, 
the direction of the bubbles was quite fortuitous. Those which reached nearly an 
inch in length had been under observation for a week, when a fall of snow effectively 
prevented further investigation. Perhaps the earliest stage of the bubbles are the 
minute white specks such as were noticed on May 2 in black wedges of ice not 
twenty-four hours old. Elsewhere, and at different times, both the small rudi- 
mentary white specks and the undoubted brine-bubbles were often seen. It seemed 
pretty certain, indeed, that it only required a sudden drop in temperature for an 
ice-flower to form round such a bubble as nucleus. 
The ice-flowers were only salt at the base, the distal crystal points being simply 
rime. Their irregular distribution, however, over a sheet of young-ice requires some 
explanation. A possible one is afforded by the way in which young-ice on a lead 
crystallises outward from the sides, and so takes different lengths of time to form, 
the resulting salt-content therefore being a variable one. 
What has been described above either as “black-ice” a day or two old, or 
more generally as “ yrtung-ice,” is simply what the Arctic whalers called “ bay-ice.” 
As ice formed in bays was always level, they also came to apply the term to 
undisturbed ice whether formed in bays . or on the open sea. Scoresby says : 
“Bay-ice is that which is newly formed on the sea and consists of two kinds, 
common bay -ice and pancake-ice ; the former occurring in smooth extensive sheets, 
and the latter in small circular pieces with raised edges.” “ Bay-ice may be said to 
extend from the first pellicle of ice up to a foot in thickness.” Payer, Brtjce, and 
J. K. Davis use the term in its original and proper sense. In most of the Antarctic 
expeditions of the last twenty years, however, the name has unfortunately been used 
literally for ice formed in bays; in the Ross Sea, ice of this nature is sometimes 
almost a miniature tabular berg. The latter, so-called “ bay-ice,” will be referred 
