286 THE BORDERLAND OF SCIENCE. 



the launching of icebergs of tremendous size ? and is 

 not the entrance to this sea near the meridian of Cape 

 Horn, perhaps to the west of it ? ' But the condition 

 of the Antarctic seas will not permit us to adopt such 

 a view of the origin of southern icebergs. Even if the 

 imagined Antarctic Mediterranean were not icebound, 

 it would be sufficiently difficult to conceive that the 

 glaciers formed around its shores would pass out in 

 stately procession through the imagined straits south 

 and west of Cape Horn. How should currents 

 sufficiently strong be generated to bear these glacial 

 masses away ? How could collisions, blocking up the 

 mouth of the strait often for months together, be 

 avoided ? And when the consideration is added that 

 an Antarctic Mediterranean would almost certainly be 

 frozen over, the whole year through, the theory that it 

 is within such a sea that Antarctic glaciers are formed 

 becomes, in our opinion, altogether untenable. If 

 such a sea exists, it must be blocked up with ice too 

 completely for any considerable movements to take 

 place within it. Even the glaciers on its borders must 

 be unlike the glaciers known to us, because the down- 

 ward motion of the ice-masses composing them must 

 be so checked by the resistance of masses already 

 accumulated, as to be scarcely perceptible even in long 

 periods of time. 



If we consider the nature of the Antarctic seas, 

 and particularly the circumstance that the Antarctic 

 summer is far colder than the Arctic summer, it .will 

 appear most probable that within the Antarctic regions 



