a?” 
country about the Mont morenct. 187 
When the St. Lawrence is frozen below the Falls, the level 
ice becomes a support onwhich the freezing spray descends 
as sleet. Itthere remains and gradually enlarges its base 
and its height, assuming an irregularly conical form. Its 
dimensions thus continually enlarging, become, towards the 
close of wirter, stupendous. Its utmost height in each 
season necessarily varies much, as the quantity of the spray 
itis formed of depends upon the degree in which the water 
producing that spray is copious. It has not been observed 
higher than 126 feet, which altitude it attained in March 
1829. The whole of the preceding season had been unusual 
ly humid. ‘The face of the cone next the Fall prescots a sta- 
lactitical structure not apparent elsewhere; and there occa- 
sioned by the dashing of water against it, which freezing in 
its descent, assnmes the form whichcharacterizes it under 
such circumstances. The whole cone is slightly, yet very 
perceptibly tinged of an earthy hue, which it can only have 
derived from infinitely comminuted particles of the bed of 
the Montmorenci abraded by the torrent, and conveyed into 
the atmosphere with the spray. 
The formation ef this cone may suggest some explanation 
of the mode in which Glaciers haye been formed. 
At is manifest that were the supply of frozeu spray never 
interrupted, as it anoually is,by an increase of temperature, it 
would be incessant—and the dimensions of the cone would 
constantly increase. It is also plain that if the cone 
instead of resting on its horizontal base were supported 
by an inclined plane, its encreasing weight and enlarging bulk 
wonld allength urge its descent to lower levels. The part 
thus deposited, would by the like process receive continual ac- 
cessions from above, and having thus acquired permanence, 
(a3 @ frozen mass apparently undiminishing, because continaal- 
ly renewed,) our cone would thus have become a glacier.— 
Now, on lofty mountains, the vapours which are congealed 
Withiu the regiou of perpetual frost, are by those summits 
continually 
