Abstract
DURING the severe frost at the close of last year, some excellent opportunities were afforded of observing various phenomena in connection with the formation and fracture of large sheets of ice. After the ice had attained a thickness of some inches on Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite Lakes, the continued cold—with the thermometer for several days eight or nine degrees below the freezing-point (Fah.), even at mid-day-caused such shrinkage in the ice that cracks of great length were now and then produced with a noise almost like the firing of a small cannon. These cracks frequently passed quite across the lake, and presented many points of interest, especially to the geologist. In some cases two cracks met at an angle, as in Fig. 1; sometimes three cracks radiated from a central point, as we may often see in a cracked plate; and occasionally one long and wide crack would appear to have shifted others crossing it, just as a fault shifts beds or veins, as in Fig. 2, where the portions were shifted about two inches, and in the same direction in the case of several distinct cross cracks.
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WARD, J. Ice Phenomena in the Lake District . Nature 11, 309–310 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/011309a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/011309a0