Evening star., 1922-10-01

from its center of deposition through
deeply submerged valleys. and over
the tops Of hills and mountains to the
sea, grinding into dust and carrying,
pushing, rolling. mainly beneath it.
untold millions of tons of old mother
earth.
THE transportation agent Of rock
i. and debris from the shores of the
arctic is not the berg. but the ice foot
or collar, which forms early in the
fall on the tide washed margin Of
every arctic land. island and rock. and
reluctantly disappears during July.
On a cold day in the fall Of the year
the tide flows in over the sand and
mud and rocks of a northern shore
until 1t reaches its greatest height
Then it gently recedes. leaving a wet
ted surface of infinitesimal thickness
ture Of the air. This process is re-
peated twice a day; consequently our
'infnitesimal thickness becomes by
accretion of respectable proportions in
few weeks, being constantly aug
mented by semi-diurnal deposit Of
moisture from the sea. Up to a GER
tain point in its formation on a gently
sloping beach it is an unbroken white
sheet, stretching from high to low
mater mark. tenaciously clutching and
conforming itself to all the inequal-
tiles of the shore. Then there comes
a time when the fotation power of
this ice beneath the water overcomes
its power of adhesion to the bottom,
with the result that the mass up to
certain point in the beach, depending
upon depth of water. is torn loose and
floats. 1t does not, however, free it
self entirely: for embedded in its un.
der surface is a mass of rocks. sand
and mud, around which and beneath
which it nodded itself weeks previous.
Now begins a second stage in the
development of this divided or outer
ice-foot, which is separated from the
inner by the so-called tidal crack" a
continual source of annoyance to the
explorer and his dog team. Ice
freezes downward by the congealing
of water on it's under surface through
conduction of cold from it's upper,
which is in contact with the air. Our
rock mass Is soon embedded in the
heart of the ice, not to reappear until
the abation of the everything thickness
of ice by the warm winds and suns of
spring and summer, and then upon
the surface to puzzle the transient
visitor as to it's source, We bid it
farewell as with an. offshore wind it
drives out of the bay and on south
ward over the horizon, gradually
dropping it's load en- route upon the
ocean bottom.
To return to the ice-foot proper,
which still adheres to the upper part
of the shore or the vertical face of a
cliff. This continues to grow upward
with every flooding Of its surface
until it reaches the height Of the
highest or spring tides and may not
be completed until an especially high
tide of April or May Of the following
spring, this offering great white
highway upon which to travel until
the middle of the summer. In small
indentations and clefts in the cliffs
lnaCCoSSlO1S u lHS sun Tdy ., lhC AS0-
foot persists throughout the year.
*A + X
GODDARD and Howell, our mag
" netic observers, embraced this
opportunity offered by our besetment
to establish magnetic station on the
pan and determine the horizontal and
vertical intensity Of the needle. Quite
contrary to the experience of Sir Ed
ward Parry and Capt. Bach of the
royal navy, our excellent Kelvin spirit
compasses, corrected by Wflfred o:
White of Boston, had given us no
trouble whatever. They were a bit
sluggish, but in the main true. Bach
reports that considerably south of
this one Of his compasses pointed
north and the other south! They evil
IDENTIFY belonged to the same family or
opposite political parties,
In 1920, when in charge Of the bridge
Of the steamship Thetis. heard a
suspicious thump in the dark, and
watching the helmsman more closely,
-. r>-~uanA a faw v,,fuutea 1ate1s hY