1-iH TJiiAllKriCilil (it'ohxi'lst. Sfptt-inbcr, ISfll 
JiiiniKjiK nil till I iibniil fn. Compiled by Georoe C. Hiklbit, 
Librarian of the Societ}'. Ibid., pp. 171-198. 
Tin Piirtji iiiid the Outfit fur the (iiioihuid Joiiriny. By H. E. Pearv. 
Il»id., pp. 256-2(55. 
Many (|iu'sti(»ns eonccrnin*! the jrlaoial drift and the Pleistf>C'ene 
ice-slK't'ts of North Anu'rica and Kurope have recently received 
much illumination, with promise of more in the near future, from 
contributions to our knowledge of the ice coverin<; the interior of 
(ireenland. Wherever that country has been explored, the edge 
of an ice-sheet is reached within distances varying from a few 
miles to fifty or rarely a hundred miles hack from the coast; and 
the icebergs of the North Atlantic are supplied by the glaciers 
which descend from this inland ice to the heads of the long and 
narrow, deep fjords, and in part by tracts of the ])road ice-sheet 
itself where it extends (juite to the outer coast line and terminates 
in the open sea. Pear}' estimates the area of Greenland to l)e 
about 75(1.0(10 s(piare miles, of which he believes that four-fifths 
or about 600.000 square miles are thus ice-enveloped. The Ant- 
arctic ice-sheet,* however, surrounding the south pole, is nearly 
ten times larger than this: and in the Pleistocene period both the 
North American and European ice-sheets occupied areas more exten- 
sive than the inland ice of Greenland, though less than the 
southern polar ice-cap. 
Comparing the existing with the ancient ice-sheets, the low 
borders of the Antarctic lands, covered with a vast expanse of 
ice which stretches far into the sea and is broken off in tal)ular 
or broad and fiat bergs, may Ije supposed to represent nearly the 
Pleistocene ice-front as it was pushed into the Atlantic on one 
side from southern Norway, from the l)asin of the North sea, 
from Scotland, the Hebrides, and Ireland, and, on the other side, 
from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the eastern shore of New 
England. But the mountainous borders of (ireenland. discharg- 
ing icebergs of every irregular shape from its fjords and from 
portions of the ice-sheet that here and there reach to the ocean, 
seem to fall short of the grandeur of all the seaward limits of the 
old ice-sheets, though most nearly resembling their development 
on the rugged shores of northern Norway, of northern Labrador, 
and of British Columbia, where the ice flowed through gaps of 
the mountains forming these coasts and their islands and termi- 
nated beyond the present seaboard. 
