12 E. P. Culverwell — Theory of the Ice Age. 



been in our part of the river. At length, when the final victory 

 of summer looked the most hopeless, a change was made in the 

 command of the forces. Summer entered into an alliance with 

 the south wind. The sun retired in dudgeon to his tent behind the 

 clouds, mists obscured the landscape, a soft south wind played 

 gently on the snow, which melted under its all-powerful influence 

 like butter upon hot toast ; the tide of battle was suddenly turned, 

 the armies of winter soon vanished into their water and beat a hasty 

 retreat towards the pole. The effect on the river was magical. Its 

 thick armour of ice cracked with a loud noise, like the rattling of 

 thunder ; every twenty-four hours it was lifted up a fathom above its 

 former level, broken up first into ice-floes and then into pack-ice, 

 and marched down the stream at least a hundred miles [in the 24 

 hours]. Even at this great speed it was more than a fortnight 

 before the last straggling ice-blocks passed our post of observation 

 on the Arctic circle, but during that time the river had risen 70 feet 

 above its winter level, although it was three miles wide; and we 

 were in the middle of a blazing hot summer, picking flowers of 

 a hundred different kinds, and feasting upon wild ducks' eggs of 

 various species. Between May 29 and June 18, I identified sixty- 

 four species I had not seen previous to the break-up of the ice." 



And yet on June 1st the snow was 6 feet deep at his post of 

 observation, and averaged 5 feet in the million and more square 

 miles which are drained by the Yenesei, an area four times that 

 drained by the Danube : so suddenly did the south loind melt an 

 area of one million square miles covered with snow 5 feet deep. 

 Nor is this out of keeping with what occurs in the other Arctic 

 river basins. As Mr. Seebohm puts it (p. 828), "the sudden 

 arrival of summer on the Arctic circle appears to occur at nearly 

 the same date in all the great river basins," though probably 

 nowhere else is it so striking as in the Yenesei. 



What becomes of Dr. CroU's theory of the difficulty of melting 

 the snow ? Surely we might, with more plausibility than Croll, 

 affirm that the Glacial period was that of the short winter and long 

 summer. For the greater heat in winter would then be almost 

 wholly given to the more southern or tropical regions of the 

 hemisphere, no difference whatever being made in the heat received 

 at the North Pole ; and since the summer heating of the Gulf Stream 

 would be much smaller than at present, it would convey less heat 

 northward in winter than at present. Hence we might then have 

 even more winter snow in northern latitudes than now, while in the 

 cooler summer we might look in vain for the same generous warmth 

 in the south wind, and so the snow would increase over the more 

 northern Arctic regions, and by cooling these would spread further 

 and further south, till at last the whole land was wrapped in its 

 icy mantle ; and so on. In truth, when once we leave the region 

 of quantitative results, and plunge into that of loose argument, we 

 are reminded of the proverb — you pay your money and you take 

 your choice. The subject is so complicated that a skilful advocate 

 can always make out a plausible case by carefully selecting the 



