Recent Glaciological Work—a Review

Extract

One of the minor misfortunes of the war has been the suspension of many lines of scientific investigation; while another has been the difficulty of receiving information concerning researches in lands in which, despite the war, it has been possible to pursue important original or collative work. The U.S.A. is a case in point, and it will be of interest to all students of ice and snow that there has appeared from the pen of Mr François E. Matthes, the well-known head of the Section of Glacial Geology of the U.S. Geological Survey, an important monograph entitled “Glaciers”. It is published as Chap. 5 in Hydrology (Physics of the Earth, Vol. 9, edited by Oscar E. Meinzer, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1942). This chapter of seventy pages reviews some of the work done and the advances made in recent years, more particularly in glaciology, as distinct from glacial geology. Incidentally, it is common knowledge that while there is in all a very large body of students of glacial geology, that is to say of the actual effects of ice masses upon the land surface, there are at work remarkably few glaciologists, whose particular study is the physical condition and constitution of those masses, even in countries where glaciers are a normal feature of the landscape.