GREENLAND. 
271 
ing sun glancing askance among them would conjure up fairy 
visions of castles of silver and cathedrals of gold. . . Suddenly 
there is a swaying, a moving of the water, and our fairy 
palace falls in pieces, or, with an echo like a prolonged thunder- 
clap, it capsizes, sending the waves in breakers up to our very 
feet.” 
Ordinary Alpine glaciers, like those of Switzerland, flowing 
down mountain gorges, receive great accumulations of rocky 
debris on each side, which are termed lateral moraines. In 
the frequent case of two such gorges uniting in one at a 
lower level, what may be called the adjacent or inner laterals 
become one, and form a medial moraine. Not unfrequently 
portions of the material thus accumulated on the surface fall 
through the crevasses , and, reaching the bottom, participate 
there in the general downward motion, and with the debris 
the glacier has dislodged from the rocky surface on which it 
travels, form the moraine profoncle or basal moraine. If, 
as in the Alps, the glacier terminates without reaching the 
sea, most of the matter thus transported is deposited at its 
foot, and forms a terminal moraine. 
The glaciers of Greenland are much more simple. They 
bring no debris from the interior ; and the short valleys 
through which they reach the sea rarely unite. The surface 
material — which is inconsiderable, and seldom takes the form 
of a medial moraine — together with that at the base, is floated 
off by the detached bergs, which not unfrequently capsize in 
the inlets, and thus deposit, at least, the greater part of their 
burthen before reaching the open sea. Hence, could the sub- 
marine surface be inspected, it would in all probability be 
found to consist of tenacious clay, imbedding a long line of 
boulders, shells, and bones of seals and other marine animals. 
This matter must frequently be re-arranged by the enormous 
momentum of ice-bergs grounding on it. Dr. Brown mentions 
the case of a berg which, in 1867, he observed at the mouth 
of the Waygatz, carrying a block of rock that, even at a dis- 
tance, looked as large as a good-sized house. 
Greenland, though so intensely cold, and apparently so 
cheerless, is full of interest to the naturalist, and by no means 
without profit for the merchant. The outskirting land sup- 
ports a luxuriant growth of from 300 to 400 species of plants, 
some of which ascend to the height of 4,000 feet ; many 
species of seals, and whales, and fish sport in the waters, which 
are also occupied by invertebrate animals and seaweeds ; 
every rock swarms with water-fowl, whilst land-birds from 
the south visit the country as a nesting-place ; countless herds 
of reindeer browse in some of its valleys ; the bark of the 
fox is to be heard even in the depth of winter ; and the polar 
