POLAR ICE NOT DUE TO ELEVATION. 67 



proof that these supposed projecting mountain-ranges 

 do not exist. 



But it may still be urged that the absence of moraine 

 matter on the surface of the inland ice is not sufficient 

 evidence that they do not exist ; for as this material 

 from the interior would have to travel hundreds of 

 miles before reaching the outskirts, a journey occupy- 

 ing a period of many years, the stones would become 

 buried under the successive layers of ice formed on the 

 surface during their passage outwards. But suppos- 

 ing this were the case, these buried moraines, if they 

 existed, ought to be seen projecting from the edge of 

 the sheet at places where icebergs break off, and also 

 on the edges of the icebergs themselves near their 

 tops ; but such, I presume, is never the case. Further, 

 as the inland ice has to force its way through the 

 comparatively narrow fjords before reaching the sea, 

 the moraines could not fail to be occasionally observed 

 did they exist. 



But supposing there were mountains in the interior, 

 this would not account for the general ice-covering. It 

 would not account for the intervening spaces between 

 the mountains being filled up with ice. To account 

 for the whole country being covered with ice through 

 the influence of mountains, we should have to assume 

 that it was studded over with them at no great dis- 

 tance from one another ; otherwise, all that we should 

 have would simply be local glaciers. 



Dr. Robert Brown, one of the highest authorities in 

 matters relating to Greenland, who does not believe in 

 the existence of mountain-masses in the interior, says : 

 — " I do not think a range of mountains at all neces- 

 sary for the formation of this huge mev de glace, for 

 this idea is derived from the Alpine and other mountain 

 ranges, where the glacial system is a petty affair com- 



