318 GENERAL SIMILARITY OF FORMATION. \June, 



strange that these carcases or bones of whales should 

 prefer elevations of eighty or five hundred feet ? Why 

 are they not in the valley bottoms ? To comprehend all 

 this, in all its apparent freshness, the rnincl becomes pain- 

 fully engaged. There is no acting cause now, and yet we 

 have had two fine seasons ; there are no purling streams, 

 and yet the mountain-sides are bared from snow. But 

 as to snow, to our conception that plays but a minor 

 part; for truly, so to speak, the hills are never "snow- 

 clad;" the fall of a few days is dispersed in a few hours, 

 and the last gale preceding actual winter puts an end to 

 further heavy falls of snow, by reason of extraordinary 

 low temperatures ; it falls as ice or rime, no longer floccu- 

 lent ; indeed, what we generally misname snow is truly, 

 perhaps, drift ice. 



At length we are driven to ask those who would find 

 reasons of their own for many tilings less intelligible, 

 By what course of events, at what epochs, did these 

 highly interesting appearances occur ; not confined sim- 

 ply to the spot before us, but continuous from hence to 

 the mouth of Lancaster Sound, and, except the off-lying 

 islands of Exmouth, North Cornwall, and the Victoria 

 Archipelago, etc., pervading all this northern region ? 



At this moment another perplexing circumstance must 

 not be lost sight of. As yet we scarcely admit the exist- 

 ence of a gale : we certainly have not experienced the 

 fierce ravages of tempests or hurricanes : we have the 

 other extreme intense cold and calm ; these two must 

 coexist ! the breeze and intense cold, or the minimum 

 of 62 "5, have not yet been experienced. Where no 

 rains or torrents can prevail, unless under a temperature 



