During 1939 three numbers of the journal of the then “Association for the Study of Snow and Ice’ were issued in roneographed form with the title Papers and Discussions. Since then the position has changed. The Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde ceased publication in the early years of the war, whether temporarily or not is not known since it has not been possible to make contact with its former editor. Yet the demand for an international journal devoted entirely to glaciology has become greater than ever. In the absence of such a journal the hope was expressed in this country, in the United States and on the Continent that this Society should take the initiative in bringing one into being. Therefore after much thought and discussion, the Committee has decided upon the rather more ambitious publication of which this is the first number. It is intended to start in a modest and restricted way, and if the journal finds favour and is able to attract suitable contributions from home and abroad it will be increased in size.
Finance may prove to be a limiting factor, but if a sufficiently high standard of subject matter is maintained, there should be no great difficulty on this score. In this connection grateful acknowledgement is made here to the receipt of a “Scientific Publications Grantin-Aid” from the Royal Society which relieves the Committee from some financial anxiety for the moment.
The aim of this journal will be to report on the transactions, welfare and other domestic news of the British Glaciological Society and in addition to publish articles on all aspects of snow and ice research from the purely scientific to the essentially practical. As an example of the latter, notes on the avoidance of avalanches and the diversion of snow-drifts would be appropriate. Correspondence will be encouraged. Care must be taken not to overlap unnecessarily with other sciences. Nevertheless some overlapping seems unavoidable; for instance, the development of snowflakes in the atmosphere is a subject that might be claimed by meteorologists, yet an article on some theme of this kind would seem suitable for these pages. Again, no study of glaciers can be complete without taking into account glacial erosion and that branch of geomorphology cannot be excluded from glaciology. In the domain of geography, land and sea ice form a connecting link and could properly be dealt with here.
The Editorial Committee hopes that within these not too narrow boundaries contributions will he received both from this country and abroad. Stress is laid upon the breadth of the field which should he covered, because in recent years much of the work of British glaciologists has been devoted to glacier physics and, important as that is, it is desirable that the basis on which this journal is conducted should be much broader than this.
