110 REV. A. IRVING, D.SC., ON MR. C. DILLWORTH FOX’S PAPER. 
On the motion of the Secretary, the thanks of the Society were 
accorded to the author for his interesting communication, and also 
to the High Commissioner for New Zealand for the loan of the 
lantern slides by which the paper was illustrated. The evidences 
adduced of enormous vertical movements of the land in recent 
times were of a most striking character, especially those of the 
Kaikouras and Spencer Mountains. 
Note on Mr. C. Dillworth Fox’s Paper, by 
Rev. A. Irving, D.Sc. 
In a paper full of original observations Mr. Fox has made a 
useful contribution to the science of Glaciation as a subordinate 
branch of the larger science of Geology. He notes the downward 
extension of the glaciers of South Island as something abnormal. 
May not the explanation be found in the proximity of the feeding- 
ground of the high altitudes (the regions of snowfield and ndv6) to 
the ocean, and the extraordinary amount of precipitation over that 
area as indicated by the excessive rainfall noted by him (p. 108) at 
Puysegur Point, averaging an inch per day ? This, with the more 
rapid downward movement of the New Zealand glaciers (owing 
probably to their “ dirtiness ” as noted long ago by Dr. Hector) 
accounts for what appears at first sight an anomaly. The causes 
being differently proportioned in Nature, the quantitative results 
differ from those with which we are acquainted in the Alps and other 
European glaciated regions. 
The most interesting point of Mr. Fox’s observations is the 
extent to which they tend inferentially to negative the idea that 
glaciers have a digging or excavating power. Many geologists have 
fallen into this error owing to their incomplete conception of the 
differential movement of glaciers. (See A. Irving, on “ The Mechanics 
of Glaciers,” Quart. Jour. Geol. Society, February, 1883; with a 
supplementary paper on “ Solar Radiation and Glacier Motion,” by 
the same, in Nature, vol. xxvii, April 12th, 1883; and a criticism 
of Nansen, Ibid., vol. xliii, p. 541.) 
