Prof. T. C. Chamberlin. 
55 
Deep gullies and ravines revealed the fact that the disintegration 
of the gneiss had extended to very considerable depths and had 
rendered it a soft, rotten mass which was not only easily crum- 
bled, but was, to a considerable extent, even pliant and waxy 
under the fingers. It was possible to descend steep slopes by 
simply thrusting the heels deep into the softened mass. The col- 
oration of the disintegrated material of this driftless tract was in 
harmony with its origin and in contrast with that of the drift-cov- 
ered region about. The combined weight of all this evidence left 
no question whatsoever as to the verity of the driftlessness of the 
tract. The area was small, not exceeding three or four miles in 
maximum diameter. It lay between the edges of the ice-cap and 
Bowdoin Bay, and on ground whose average altitude was less 
than that of the glacier. A photograph taken from the moraine 
at the edge of the glacier and looking across the driftless area 
shows the ice of Bowdoin Bay in the perspective. It is clear, 
therefore, that its immunity from glaciation was not due to special 
elevation. It can only be attributed to the agencies inherently 
concerned in the growth and wastage of the glacier. 
FORMER EXTENT OF GLACIATION. It is evident that 
the occurrence of even a small driftless area on the border of the 
widest stretch of the Greenland ice-sheet is extremely significant 
respecting its former extension. Attention has already been 
called to the angular topography that characterizes perhaps one- 
half of the western coast of Greenland. Some of the coastal is- 
lands are notably ragged, examples of which have already been 
mentioned in Conical Rock and Dalrymple Island. Some rela- 
tively slender residual columns, as the Devibs Thumb and Mel- 
ville Monument, stand on or near the coast. The combined tes- 
timony of these seems to amount practically to a demonstration 
that, while the ice of Greenland formerly extended somewhat be- 
yond its present border, it has never had any great amplification, 
at least in a westerly direction. This conclusion is subject to the 
bare possibility that there was a more extensive glaciation at a 
date so ancient as to permit the development of angular contours 
since, as well as the destruction of the drift and the deep disin- 
