SECRETARY'S REPORT. 177 



whether we have anywhere a cause, which, in our day, produces 

 that combination of phenomena, so that no link shall be want- 

 ing ; and, if that be found, whether it is possible that, at some 

 time or other, that known cause should have acted on a larger 

 scale, and have been productive of those same effects in regions 

 where it is no longer known. 



Now, I believe that such a cavise exists. I believe it may be 

 seen doing these very things to-day. I believe that that cause, 

 which is now limited within a very small area, was once much 

 more extensive, and, in fact, worked wherever we find drift ; 

 and that cause, in my estimation, is the glaciers which are found 

 only in the high mountains of Central Europe, in the high 

 mountains of this hemisphere, within certain limits in the Arctic 

 regions, and in the Antartic regions ; and it is to an attempt to 

 prove to you that there were once fields of ice covering the 

 whole of this blessed country, extending not only over the 

 colder and more temperate part of the Northern States, but at 

 least to latitude thirty-six, it is to an attempt to prove that such 

 a state of things has existed here, that I will devote the remainder 

 of my time this evening. 



Now, what is a glacier ? I wish I could open to you the scene 

 as we have it in the region where glaciers exist now. It would 

 go very far to elucidate the subject which I propose to consider ; 

 or, at any rate, give you some idea of the colossal dimensions 

 which glaciers exhibit even now, though they are reduced to 

 such an extraordinary extent from wliat they were in' former 

 times. A glacier is not frozen water, resulting from the con- 

 gealing of the Alpine streams, but it is the result of the slow 

 and gradual transformation into ice of that snow which falls 

 every winter in high mountains. That process of transforming 

 snow into ice, we may witness every winter in our streets. When, 

 after a snow fall, the temperature rises a little above thirty-two 

 degrees, the snow becomes moist, and, in consequence of this par- 

 tial melting, it is very soon transformed into a mass of ice grains, 

 which are loosely cohered, or entirely incoherent. Let a frost 

 come, and these grains are frozen together, and the whole mass 

 becomes one pudding-stone of ice, if I may express myself so. 

 It is a mass of ice, not consisting of layers, as results from the 

 freezing of water in successive sheets, but it is a mass of ice 

 resulting from the congealing of the grains of ice which have 



23* 



