In that portion of Antarctica which was explored by the German expedition, the inland ice is not as in Victoria Land restrained within walls of rock, but is spread out upon the continent so as to assume its natural ice slopes, which are therefore much flatter than those examined in Greenland and Victoria Land. Here in Kaiser Wilhelm Land the ice rises at its sea margin in a cliff which is from 130 to 165 feet in height, then upon a fairly steeply curving slope to an elevation of perhaps a thousand feet. Here the grades have become relatively level, and on ever flatter slopes the surface appears to continue into the distant interior (plate 14). Near the ice margin numerous fissures betray a motion within the mass which exact measurements indicate to be but one foot per day, and at a distance of a mile and a quarter from the margin even this slight value has diminished by fully one eighth. It can hardly be doubted that at moderate distances only within the ice margin, the glacier is practically without motion. ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ PLATE 14. │ │ │ │ [Illustration: View of the margin of the Antarctic continental │ │ glacier in Kaiser Wilhelm Land (after E. v. Drygalski).] │ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ Rain or general melting conditions being unknown in Antarctica, a striking contrast is offered to the marginal zone of the Greenland continent. This is to a large extent explained by the existence upon the northern land mass of a coastland ribbon which becomes quickly heated in the sun’s rays, and both by warming the air and by radiating heat to the ice it causes melting and produces local air temperatures which in summer may even be described as hot. About Independence Bay in latitude 82° N. and near the northernmost extremity of Greenland, Peary descended from the inland ice into a little valley within which musk oxen were lazily grazing and where bees buzzed from blossom to blossom over a gorgeous carpet of flowers. [Illustration: FIG. 311.—Sections across the inland ice of Victoria Land, Antarctica, with the shelf ice in front (after Shackleton).]