=The ground moraine.= The drift dragged along at the glacier's base
and lodged beneath it is known as the ground moraine. Part of the
material of it has fallen down deep crevasses and part has been torn
and worn from the glacier's bed and banks. While the stones of the
surface moraines remain as angular as when they lodged on the ice,
many of those of the ground moraine have been blunted on the edges and
faceted and scratched by being ground against one another and the
rocky bed.
In glaciers such as those of Greenland, whose basal layers are well
loaded with drift and whose surface layers are nearly clean, different
layers have different rates of motion, according to the amount of
drift with which they are clogged. One layer glides over another, and
the stones inset in each are ground and smoothed and scratched.
Usually the sides of glaciated pebbles are more worn than the ends,
and the scratches upon them run with the longer axis of the stone.
Why?
=The terminal moraine.= As a glacier is in constant motion, it brings
to its end all of its load except such parts of the ground moraine as
may find permanent lodgment beneath the ice. Where the glacier front
remains for some time at one place, there is formed an accumulation of
drift known as the terminal moraine. In valley glaciers it is shaped
by the ice front to a crescent whose convex side is downstream. Some
of the pebbles of the terminal moraine are angular, and some are
faceted and scored, the latter having come by the hard road of the
ground moraine. The material of the dump is for the most part
unsorted, though the water of the melting ice may find opportunity to
leave patches of stratified sands and gravels in the midst of the
unstratified mass of drift, and the finer material is in places washed
away.
[Illustration: Fig. 105. Terminal Moraine of a Glacier in Montana
The ice has melted back from the morainic ridge on the left and
is building another on the right. The hollow between the ridges
is occupied by a lakelet.]
=Glacier drainage.= The terminal moraine is commonly breached by a
considerable stream, which issues from beneath the ice by a tunnel
whose portal has been enlarged to a beautiful archway by melting
in the sun and the warm air (Fig. 107). The stream is gray with
silt and loaded with sand and gravel washed from the ground
moraine. "Glacier milk" the Swiss call this muddy water, the gray
color of whose silt proves it rock flour freshly ground by the ice
from the unoxidized sound rock of its bed, the mud of streams
being yellowish when it is washed from the oxidized mantle of
waste. Since glacial streams are well loaded with waste due to
vigorous ice erosion, the valley in front of the glacier is
commonly aggraded to a broad, flat floor. These outwash deposits
are known as _valley drift_.
[Illustration: Fig. 106. Heavy Moraine about the Terminus of a
Glacier in the Rocky Mountains of Canada
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