148 The American Geologist. September, i897 
and this part of the ice is subjected to melting only by con- 
tact with water whose temperature never rises much above 
the freezing point. Hence great quantities of the lower de- 
bris cannot dmp off in the neighborhood of the glacier. Ev- 
ery, now and then an iceberg passes off from this glacier front, 
and the moraine which it contains passes out into the fjord, 
to be distributed over its bed, or in the more distant seas. It 
therefore seems that along the sea front the morainic accum- 
ulation must be slight. With a distinct surface moraine the 
case would be quite different. 
On the Land. Along the land margin there is a nearly 
continuous morainic ridge parallel to the ice front. (Fig. 2, 
Plate VIII, and Figs. 1 and 2, Plate IX.) It usually rests at 
the base of the ice foot, and is sometimes a part of this foot, 
where debris has accumulated and protected the ice beneath 
from the warmth of the sun, causing this part of the glacier 
to rise as a ridge. Frequently, however, the moraine ridge is, 
well separated from the ice margin, and sometimes there are 
several parallel ridges from which the ice front has succes- 
sively withdrawn. Recent withdrawal is indicated by this 
ridge now separated from the ice. 
To me it was extremely disappointing to find nothing that 
closely resembled the great moraines of the United States. In 
topographic outline the deposit along the ice edge on the land 
was more like an esker than a moraine. It was a ridge quite 
like a lateral moraine, and some of the larger moraine ridges 
extend as long embankments, rising from ten to twenty feet, 
with a width of thirty or forty feet across the base. Here and 
there the combination of several ridges gives the hummocky 
outline of our moraines, but these were distinctly exceptional. 
(Plate IX, Fig. 2.) The reason for this peculiarity of outline 
is evidently the direction of ice motion. Along the ice mar- 
gin the movement is diagonal to the land; hence, while there 
is a movement toward the narrow valley glacier, there is also 
some material brought to the edge and left there by melting. 
An increase in the supply would cause less topographic 
change on the land margin than in the sea face. In this re- 
gion of great topographic diversity there is little chance of an 
oscillation on the front. The forward movement would over- 
ride the moraine ridges and carry the material down toward 
