GEOLOGY OF VICTORIA ISLAND AND ADJACENT REGIONS,

by A. LincolnWashburn '35. Geological Society of America, Memoir 22, 1947. 142 pp.

This scholarly but simply worded study of one of the larger islands of the Canadian arctic is by a Dartmouth geology major who received his Ph.D. at Yale in 1945. With his devoted energetic wife, Washburn lived in the far north during the summers of 1938 and 1939, and from April 1940 to February 1941, accomplishing an amazing amount of field work under adverse conditions. The results are clearly and modestly presented.

Washburn concludes that the western Canadian arctic was largely if not wholly covered by ice caps during the glacial period, despite former claims of certain botanists and geologists. Parallel groovings over wide areas and long distances, eskers and other glacial records support his opinion. Moreover, scores of raised beaches line the coast up to 500 feet elevation, showing that Victoria Island has been upwarped at least that much since the Ice Age, like southeastern Canada and northern New England, where the upbending of the earth's crust is attributed to removal of the former heavy ice load.

Rafting of boulders and morainic debris by drifting sea ice is said to be widespread and important in this arctic area, although that process has been given little attention by geologists since Lyell's "theory of drift," propounded a century ago failed to explain the records of continental glaciation in the United States and northern Europe. The weird creep of soil (solifluction) which plays the chief role in sculpture of arctic landscapes is vividly described and analyzed, as well as odd details of pattern of frozen ground (polygons, mud circles, stripes and furrows). AH are clearly shown on the author's photographs.

It does not matter that this is admittedly "reconnaissance." It is a very creditable field investigation that called for sustained physical effort, sound training and keen observation.