GLACIAL OBSERVATIONS. 171 



various animals and plants to reach Newfoundland from the 

 shores of the neighboring continent. 



The mystery of Greenland and of the great ice age does not 

 grow less as we extend our study of the facts, both past and 

 present. When one treads the solitary wastes of the vast ice- 

 fields of Greenland, they seem the very image of firmness and 

 immobility ; yet he has but to put his ear down to the surface 

 to hear the busy hum of innumerable infinitesimal forces 

 which are all conspiring to produce in their ultimate effects 

 most startling results ; and when once he returns to the head 

 of the fiord, where the great glacier enters the sea, there is 

 the most startling evidence of the irresistible power of these 

 cumulative forces 



