I. The Glaciers of Spitsbergen

Abstract

Introduction. The object of this paper is to record glaciological observations made by the author in Spitsbergen during the summers of 1919 and 1920, when he was prospecting on behalf of the Scottish Spitsbergen Syndicate, of Edinburgh; and also to summarise the more important work on Spitsbergen glaciers that has been done since the classic investigations of Professors Garwood and Gregory. Spitsbergen is the most accessible polar land; it is highly glaciated, its glaciers covering a great range of types from icecaps of small dimensions to corrie glaciers and dead ice slabs on cols. All these are easily accessible to intensive study, which is of the utmost importance to British glaciology, inasmuch as Spitsbergen gives us a present-day picture of a state of affairs that must have obtained during the decay of the great Pleistocene ice sheet of our own country. Mr. G. W. Lamplugh (1911, p. 219)1 has remarked on the lithological similarities between the stratified rocks of Spitsbergen and of the British Isles, especially in their bearing on the origin of boulder clay. The homology between the geological structure, stratigraphy, and geomorphology of Spitsbergen, and of the British Isles, is very close, and deserves to be stressed in relation to the study of Pleistocene glaciation in the latter country. Just as in Britain, the hard ancient rocks of complicated structure in Spitsbergen are to be found in the northern and western mountains; Carboniferous limestones occupy extensive tracts in the central regions about Ice Fiord; whereas younger rocks of This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract The author is much indebted to the Carnegie Trustees for the Universities of Scotland for a grant in aid of publication of the illustrations of this paper.