898 The American Geologist. june. 1893 
Malaspina glacier or ice-sheet, occupying deep well-like depressions 
or pits constricted half way down, somewhat in the shape of an 
hour-glass, into which the drift exposed by ablation on the con- 
tiguous ice surface falls, so that it would be left as a mound if the 
ice were melted away. 
On the moraine-covered portion, especially where plants have 
taken root, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lakelets, occupy- 
ing kettle-shaped depressions If we should go down to the 
glacier and examine such a lakelet near at hand, we should find that the 
cliffs of ice surrounding them are usually unsymmetrical, being espe- 
cially steep and rugged on one side and low or perhaps wanting entirely 
on the other. But there is no regularity in this respect; the steep 
slopes may face in any direction. On bright days the encircling walls 
are always dripping with water produced by the melting of the ice; lit- 
tle rills are constantly flowing down their sides and plunging in minia- 
ture cataracts Into the lake below; the stores at the top of the ice cliffs, 
belonging to the general sheet of debris covering the glacier, are con- 
tinually being undermined and precipitated into the water. A curious 
fact in reference to the walls of the lakelets is that the melting of the 
ice below the surface is more rapid than above, where it is exposed to 
the direct rays of the sun. As a result the depressions have the form of 
an hour-glass. 
Speaking of the Graliano glacier, on page 89, Russell says: 
My surprise therefore was great when, after forcing my way through 
the dense thickets, I reached the top of the hill, and found a large ket- 
tle-shaped depression, the sides of which were solid walls of ice fifty feet 
high. This showed at once that the supposed hill was really the extrem- 
ity of a glacier, long dead and deeply buried beneath forest-covered de- 
bris. In the bottom of the kettle-like depression lay a pond of muddy 
water, and, as the ice-cliffs about the lakelet melted in the warm sun- 
light, miniature avalanches of ice and stones, mingled with sticks and 
bushes that had been undermined, frequently rattled down its sides and 
splashed into the water below. Further examination revealed the fact 
that scores of such kettles are scattered over the surface of the buried 
glacier. 
Again, on page 111, he says of the Hayden glacier: 
The debris is scattered over the surface in a belt several rods wide; 
but it is not deep, as the ice can almost everywhere be seen between the 
stones. Where the fragments of rock are most widely separated, there 
are fine illustrations of the manner in which small, dark stones absorb 
the heat of the sun and melt the ice beneath more rapidly than the sur- 
rounding surface, sinking into the ice so as to form little wells, several 
inches deep, filled with clear water. Larger stones, which are not 
warmed through during a day's sunshine, protect the ice beneath while 
the adjacent surface is melted, and consequently become elevated on 
