160 REMARKS OF DR. KANE I 



from a furious cannonading. The noise was equal 

 to that of thunder, which it nearly resembled. The 

 column which fell was nearly square, and in mag- 

 nitude resembled a church. It broke into thou- 

 sands of pieces. This circumstance was a happy 

 caution, for we might inadvertently have gone to 

 the very base of the icy cliff, from whence masses 

 of considerable magnitude were continually break- 

 ing." 



Now, this incident suggests the probability, that, 

 had the face of the glacier projected into deep 

 water, the mass which broke off might have fallen 

 into the sea without being broken to pieces, and 

 might have floated away as a berg. We confess, 

 however, to be partial to the view expressed by 

 some writers, that the great glaciers continue year 

 by year to thrust their thick tongues out to sea, 

 until the projecting masses reach water sufficiently 

 deep to float them, when they are quietly cracked 

 off from their parent and carried away without any 

 fall or plunge. The following remarks by Dr. Kane 

 will make this more clear. Writing of the iceberg, 

 he says : 



" So far from falling into the sea, broken by its 

 weight from the parent glacier, it rises from the 

 sea. The process is at once gradual and compara- 

 tively quiet. The idea of icebergs being discharged, 

 so universal among systematic writers, and so 

 recently admitted by myself, seems to me at 

 variance with the regulated and progressive action 



