POLAR ICE NOT DUE TO ELEVATION. 69 



collection of islands fused together by ice. This opinion 

 is concurred in by Dr. Brown, who says that " most 

 likely it will be found that Greenland will end in a 

 broken series of islands forming a Polar archipelago. 

 That the continent (?) is itself a series of such islands 

 and islets — consolidated by means of the inland ice — I 

 have already shown to be highly probable, if not abso- 

 lutely certain, as Giesecke and Scoresby affirmed." It 

 has long been a belief that several of the west-coast 

 fjords cut through Greenland from sea to sea — in 

 short, that they are simply straits filled up with ice. 

 The important bearing that this island-condition of 

 Greenland has on the explanation of the warm inter- 

 giacial periods of that country will be shown in a 

 future chapter. 



Antarctic Regions. — It need hardly be remarked, 

 that what has been stated as to the total absence of 

 proof that Greenland possesses elevated plateaus and 

 ranges of lofty mountains holds in a still more marked 

 degree in reference to the Antarctic continent. Here 

 is a region nearly 3000 miles across, buried under ice, 

 on which the foot of man never trod. There is not the 

 shadow of a basis for concluding that the interior of 

 this immense region is, under the ice, greatly elevated, 

 or that it possesses lofty mountain-ranges. The 

 probability seems rather to be that, like Greenland, 

 the area, as Sir Wyville Thomson supposes, consists of 

 comparatively low dismembered land or groups of 

 islands bound together by a continuous sheet of ice. 

 " We have no evidence," says Sir Wyville, " that this 

 space, which includes an area of about 4,500,000 square 

 miles, nearly double that of Australia, is continuous 

 land. The presumption would seem rather to be that 

 it is at all events greatly broken up; a large portion 

 of it probably consisting of groups of low islands 



