only recognisable by the brighter green that marked the sites A single rib lying near the beach showed that at some time whales must have penetrated Smith Sound to this point. At the period of our visit very little snow was lying on Norman Lockyer Island; its summit, some 400 feet high, showed a great amount of glacial scratching. The highest point is its southern face, and from here the land slopes gradually to the sea, the dip of the rock being from south to north. The lines of old sea-margin are very conspicuously marked on the island by a series of terraces extending across its face. These terraces are formed of angular, weathered fragments of limestone, containing a few fossils, which also appear in the parent rock. I brought away from there Favosites gothlandicus and F. alveolaris, well-known Upper Silurian forms The fact of the terraces on Norman Lockyer Island being formed of angular fragments at once attracted our attention, for it showed that they were not sea-beaches in the ordinary sense of the term wherem the component pebbles are found more or less rounded' My attention was naturally directed to the ice-foot, which clinks' to the shore, for a solution of the problem, and I am convinced that these terraces are formed by the ice-foot banking up the material as it falls from the cliffs above. A long series of subse- quent observations confirmed me in the following views:—
"The typical aspect of the ice-foot in Smith Sound is that of a terrace of fifty to a hundred yards in width, stretching from the base of the talus to the water's edge, its width varying with the slope of the sea-bottom decreasing in direct proportion to the increase of the land slope.
"The first action of the solar rays is exerted on the snow forming the uppermost layer of the ice-foot which lies nearest to and upon the talus the dark surfaces of which rapidly absorb the heat of the sun A deep trench is formed in the snow at the junction, which becomes filled with water, partly derived from the melted snow of the ice-foot and partly from that pouring down from the uplands; these united streams in a few hours eat deep channels across the ice-foot and discharge themselves into the sea through transverse gullies. At low water the ditches and gullies are drained, whilst at high water the sea pours in through these" apertures with considerable violence, and sweeping right and left, traverses the ditch, eats away the base of the talus, and re-assorts the material."*
Our enforced delay gave us several opportunities for dredging, but only in shallow water, not more than twenty fathoms. The fishes
Quarterly Journal Geol. Soc, 1878, p. 565.
