EXISTING GLACIERS. 41 



of the particles of grain on one another; and, given a 

 floor of infinite extension and a pile of sufficient amount, 

 the mass would move outward to any distance, and with a 

 very slight pitch or slope it would slide forward along the 

 incline.' To this let me add that if the floor on the mar- 

 gin of the heap of grain was undulating the stream of 

 grain would take the course of such undulations. The 

 want, therefore, of much slope in a country and the ab- 

 sence of any great mountain-range are of very little mo- 

 ment to the movement of land-ice, provided we have snow 

 enough" On another page Dr. Brown had well said that 

 "the country seems only a circlet of islands separated 

 from one another by deep fiords or straits, and bound to- 

 gether on the landward side by the great ice covering 

 which overlies the whole interior. ... No doubt under 

 this ice there lies land, just as it lies under the sea ; but 

 nowadays none can be seen, and as an insulating medium 

 it might as well be water." 



In his recently published volumes descriptive of the 

 journey across the Greenland ice-sheet, alluded to on page 

 39, Dr. Nansen sums up his inferences in very much the 

 same way : " The ice-sheet rises comparatively abruptly 

 from the sea on both sides, but more especially on the 

 east coast, while its central portion is tolerably flat. On 

 the whole, the gradient decreases the farther one gets into 

 the interior, and the mass thus presents the form of a 

 shield with a surface corrugated by gentle, almost imper- 

 ceptible, undulations lying more or less north and south, 

 and with its highest point not placed symmetrically, but 

 very decidedly nearer the east coast than the west." 



From this rapid glance at the existing glaciers of the 

 world we see that a great ice age is not altogether a 

 strange thing in the world. The lands about the south 

 pole and Greenland are each continental in dimensions, 

 and present at the present time accumulations of land-ice 

 so extensive, so deep, and so alive with motion as to pre- 



