HIGH LIFE. 97 



their unknown and unsuspected fellow-creatures else- 

 where. 



Not only has the Glacial epoch left these organic traces 

 of its existence, however ; in some parts of New Hamp- 

 shire, where the glaciers were unusually thick and deep, 

 fragments of the primaeval ice itself still remain on the 

 spots where they were originally stranded. Among the 

 shady glens of the white mountains there occur here and 

 there great masses of ancient ice, the unmelted remnant 

 of primaeval glaciers ; and one of these is so large that an 

 artificial cave has been cleverly excavated in it, as an 

 attraction for tourists, by the canny Yankee proprietor. 

 Elsewhere the old ice-blocks are buried under the debris 

 of moraine-stuff and alluvium, and are only accidentally 

 discovered by the sinking of what are locally known as 

 ice-wells. No existing conditions can account for the 

 formation of such solid rocks of ice at such a depth in 

 the soil. They are essentially glacier-like in origin and 

 character : they result from the pressure of snow into a 

 crystalline mass in a mountain valley : and they must 

 have remained there unmelted ever since the close of the 

 Glacial epoch, which, by Dr. Croll's calculations, must 

 most probably have ceased to plague our earth some 

 eighty thousand years ago. Modern America, however, 

 has no respect for antiquity : and it is at present engaged 

 in using up this palaeocrystic deposit this belated store- 

 house of prehistoric ice in the manufacture of gin slings 

 and brandy cocktails. 



As one scales a mountain of moderate height say 

 seven or eight thousand feet in a temperate climate, 

 one is sure to be struck by the gradual diminution as one 



H 



