Correspondence. 211 
glacier, through the mass of bed rock as quickly as through the more re¬ 
cently and only partly exposed stone. 
Whatever bias of an anti-glacial character I may show it is the result of 
the evidence of field observations against the widely disseminated specu¬ 
lations and dogmatic teachings of glacialists, whose theories have in the 
language of my reviewer, become “tyrannical.” 
My conclusions as to the power of glaciers to erode are in harmony 
with those of the majority of European geologists, who have had the best 
opportunities of studying living glaciers. Despite the“tyrannical theories”, 
modern research is constantly showing that the patent rights of the 
glaciers have been and are being infringed by other agents. Thus Mr. 
Hugh Miller,a glacialist, states that “in mere indiscriminateness of com¬ 
position (which is the character most emphasized) the till is not to be dis¬ 
tinguished from the boulder-clay formed under berg or raft-ice, such as 
the highest marine clays of the Norwegian coasts.” The same is true for 
the marine boulder-clay of the St. Lawrence valley. Mr. E. Whymper, 
and Prof. T. Bonney,^[f and others regard glaciers and snow-fields as hav¬ 
ing, comparatively a protecting influence. All of these observations and 
conclusions show that glacial geology is still a debatable field, and not 
settled as our glacial friends would wish. 
Advices from the village of Kerschkaranza, in the Kola peninsula, on 
the White Sea, state that on January 5 a curious and destructive pheno¬ 
menon occurred there. At 4 a. m. the inhabitants were awakened by a 
peculiar, dull, heavy detonation, like that of distant artillery. 
Piled up to a hight of several hundred feet, the ice in consequence, no 
doubt of the enormous ocean pressure without was seen to begin mov¬ 
ing from the north-west towards the shore. The gigantic ice-wall moved 
irresistibly forward, and soon reached the shore and the village, which it 
completely buried, the ice extending a mile inland. The forward move¬ 
ment of the ice lasted four hours * 
Dr. Percy Mathews, for several years medical officer of the Hudson’s 
Bay Company, at York Factory has furnished me with the following 
facts relating to the action of the ice at the mouth of Hayes river as it 
empties into Hudson’s bay. The mouth of the river is about twenty feet 
deep. In it the ground-ice charged with mud, forms to a Thickness of 
four feet. After the surface ice, which is sometimes seven feet thick in 
the channel of the river, is broken up, the ground-ice rises and is carried 
out, bearing its load, by a considerable current. Owing to ice-jams in the 
river, the ice is forcedvover the low shores, polishing stones, frozen in the 
soil and is itself sometimes grooved. It also digs and scours out the 
channel. The stones, brought down by the river-ice, have often a weight 
of twenty or thirty, and occasionally of over a hundred tons. In one case 
a six-ton anchor, frozen in the soil, had its shaft, nine inches in diameter, 
planed off as if it had been so much wood. As the spring tides rise 
here to 27 feet, they aid largely in piling up the ice; and when the packs 
of ice meet, much of their mass is crushed into fragments. 
HGeol. Mag. 1888, p. 273, 
UHGeol. Mag. 1888, p. 548. 
♦“Nature”, June 28, 1888, p. 205. 
