COLD AND ICE ON THE EARTH 



reach the rocky floor over which the ice is sliding. Its 

 progress then resembles that of the Irish gentleman who 

 was travelling in a Sedan chair out of which the seat and 

 the bottom had fallen, and who said that if 'twere not for 

 the fashion of the thing he'd as lief walk. The rubbish 

 borne onward on the surface of the glacier is known as 

 moraine-stuff, and the mounds of it at the edge of the 

 glacier are called lateral moraines. Where two glaciers 

 unite like two rivers, their moraines, right-hand and left- 

 hand, will join, and in the new glacier a new moraine will 

 appear running down the middle, and so called a medial 

 moraine. Where a glacier has many tributaries bearing 

 a good deal of moraine-stuff, its surface may be like a 

 bare plain so covered with stones that the ice beneath can 

 hardly be discerned except here and there. At the end 

 of the glacier where the ice melts, the heaps of stones, 

 ever adding to their numbers, are deposited in heaps, to 

 which are given the name of the terminal moraine. 



With such tokens of their existence as this, glaciers, as 

 will readily be understood, leave visiting-cards in history 

 that cannot easily be mistaken. Even existing glaciers 

 tell strange stories. Nowadays glaciers are carefully mea- 

 sured and examined both in Switzerland and in Canada. 

 During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the 

 first decade of the twentieth the Swiss glaciers were found 

 to show signs of receding farther up their valleys. The 

 same thing has been observed about some of the Canadian 

 glaciers. There are several plausible reasons for this. 

 Professor Schaeberle says that the earth is growing cooler, 

 and that in the temperate regions the winter rainfall 



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