126 The America II (ic()h)-(j!st. Augur^t, vm. 
at low inclinations and have an aggregate thickness of 4,000 or 5,000 feet. 
No fossils have been found in this series, but it is provisionally regarded 
as of Tertiary age, like the plant-bearing beds, of similar lithologic 
character in the Disco region. Between the crystalline and the clastic 
rocks, "the discordance is very great and indicates that the crystalline 
terrane had assumed essentially its present attitude, had undergone very 
great erosion, and had approached its present topographic expression, 
before the sandstone was laid down upon it. If the sandstone were re- 
moved, the relief of the topography would apparently not be less than it 
is now, and not very different from it in general aspect." 
The floe ice formed in Baffin bay was found to seldom exceed five or 
six feet in thickness; but the East Greenland current, sweeping around 
cape Farewell and running thence northward some five hundred miles 
in a belt adjoining the west coast, brings closely driven ice-floes, an im- 
passable ice-pack, and these floes are commonly 15 to 20 feet thick and 
in some cases probably 33 feet or more. This great thickness is regarded 
as the result of freezing during several years, perhax)s with increase by 
snowfall. 
Few icebergs were drifted with the floes from East Greenland. North- 
ward only a few others were seen, until a grand procession, thirty being 
in sight at once, was encountered streaming out southwesterly from 
Disco bay, into which they had been discharged by the Jacobshaven 
glacier. Another magnificent procession of icebergs was seen moving 
outward from the Umanak fjord. These were much larger but more 
tabular and less jiicturesque. Thirty or forty of large size, besides many 
smaller ones, were in view at the same time. In Inglefleld gulf hun- 
dreds of icebergs were frozen in the floe-ice, which remained wholly un- 
broken in 1894 until August. Many of these bergs are doubtless held 
several years before thej' reach Baffin bay to Vje borne southward in the 
Labrador current. w. u. 
Preliminary Report on the PJnjsicnl Gcoyraplnj of tlie Litoriiia Sea. 
By Henr. Munthe. (Pages 1-38, with two mai^s, in vol. ii. Bulletin of 
the Geological Institution of the University of Upsala, 1895.) Very 
thorough study is given in this paper to the diatoms, Rhizopoda, and 
Ostracoda, which occur in the Litorina deposits around the Baltic sea 
and the gulf of Bothnia. This work well supplements the valuable pa- 
pers contributed by Baron Da Geer to the Bulletin of the Gsological So- 
ciety of America (vol. iii, pp. 65-68, with map) and the American Ge- 
OLOGLST (vol. IX, pp. 247-219. April, 1892: vol. xi, pp. 22-44, Jan., 1893). 
The following stages in the history of the Baltic basin are ascertained : 
1. TJie time of the great Baltic glacier, forming marginal moraines 
south and east of the present sea and gulf. 
2. Yoldia time, when the land subsidence reached its maximum. The 
Baltic then received bsrgsand glacial rivers from ths retreating ic3, and 
was inhabited by Yoldia artica, which now is restricted to Arctic re- 
gions, preferring the muddy waters where the sea has inflowing tribu- 
taries from glaciers. There was direct connection with the ocean by 
the Cattegat strait dividing Sweden and Denmark, and also across the 
