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V.—Account of an Expedition to Greenland in the Year 1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

A. E. Nordenskiöld
A. E. Nordenskiöld
Affiliation:
Foreign Correspondent Geol. Soc. Lond., etc., etc., etc.
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Extract

These holes in the ice filled with water are in no way connected with each other, and at the bottom of them we found everywhere, not only near the border, but in the most distant parts of the inland ice visited by us, a layer, some few millimetres thick, of grey powder, often conglomerated into small round balls of loose consistency. Under the microscope, the principal substance of this remarkable powder appeared to consist of white angular transparent grains. We could also observe remains of vegetable fragments; yellow, imperfectly translucent particles, with, as it appeared, evident surfaces of cleavage (felspar?); green crystals (augite) and black opaque grains, which were attracted by the magnet. The quantity of these foreign components is, however, so inconsiderable, that the whole mass may be looked upon as one homogeneous substance.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 9 , Issue 98 , August 1872 , pp. 355 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1872

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References

page 357 note 1 A more detailed account, accompanied by drawings, of these remarkable Algæ all hereafter be published in the “K. Vet. Akademiens Öftersigt.”

page 362 note 1 For the preservation of a scratched stone surface it is necessary that it should be protected by a layer of water, clay, or sand, from the destructive effects of frost, and more especially from those of lichens. The finest scratches disappear in a few years from a mountain slab; the position of which is favourable to lichen vegetation, but are on the contrary preserved where lichen vegetation cannot develope itself—as for example, when the rock is for a time in the spring covered with water.

page 363 note 1 Switzerland was probably never quite covered with real inland ice, its glaciers have only been considerably more extensive than they now are.