100 J. D. Dana — Flood, of the Connecticut River Valley. 



thus increasingly great on going southward along the Green- 

 land coast. 



It may be said that the facts from Greenland are only par- 

 tially known ; and, again, that a depression is now going on in 

 Southern Greenland which has increased, and may have occa- 

 sioned, the discrepancy. But, connecting them with the facts 

 from the Atlantic borders in more southern latitudes, the evi- 

 dence against the hypothesis is decisive. 



(2.) The idea of a polar ice-cap of the extent claimed is an 

 assumption opposed to known meteorological laws and ob- 

 served climatal facts. For the position of the region of maxi- 

 mum ice would have depended very largely on that of the 

 area, of greatest precipitation ; and, as the writer, accordingly, 

 some years since suggested,* and Mr. W. J. McGee has form- 

 ally demonstrated, f the ice would have diminished toward the 

 pole as well as to the northwestward. The eastern ice-range. 

 located in this way between the Atlantic Ocean and points not 

 far west of the Winnipeg line of lakes, 1000 miles in width at 

 base, presented an immense surface for condensing the moisture 

 of the Atlantic winds and diminishing the amount carried north- 



trd, so that the ice in Greenland would have had hardly half 



the height of that to the southwest, and more northern poia 

 "ring the thicl 

 i Greenland in 60° N., 5728 feet, and in 70° N., i 



still less; — Mr. \h-<i. f ilations makin 



while south and southeast of Hudson's Bay on the Canada 

 water-shed, it was probably not less than 12,000 feet. 



In accordance with these conclusions, the ice, at the present 

 time, is reported by Arctic travelers to be less thick in the 

 northern part of North Greenland than in the part to the south, 

 and also in the lands west of Greenland than on Greenland 

 itself. Messrs. Feilden and De Eance (loc. cit., p. 567) speak 

 of the paucity of glaciers in Grinnell Land, lying just west of 

 I, stating that north of 81° N. on this more western 

 land, no glaciers descend to the sea-level although they do on 

 the coast opposite of Greenland, the situation of Greenland 

 ;m-;iinst the Atlantic rendering it a region of more precipita- 

 tion than that to the west; and so it would have been under the 

 more favorable conditions for precipitation of the Glacial era. 

 As to the height of the Greenland ice in the Glacial era we have 

 the ob.scrvittiotus of Mr. A. Kornerup, of Jensen's Kxpedition.'-t 

 that, near the parallel of 64° N. about the Ameralik and Buxe 

 fiords, there are glacial scratches at a height of 1260 meters 



fProc. Amer. Asa 



