74 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



that it must be the general character of the Antarctic 

 land ; for all, or nearly all, of the bergs are of this 

 tabular form. Again, the unaltered character of the 

 stratifications of the bergs shows that there can be 

 no great mountain-ranges, or even much rough and 

 uneven ground, in the interior ; for if there were, the 

 bergs in their passage outwards would have had to 

 pass over it ; and this they could not have done and 

 still have retained, as they actually have, their hori- 

 zontal stratification undisturbed. These icebergs, as 

 we have seen, must have traversed in their outward 

 motion, before being disconnected with the ice-sheet, 

 a distance of hundreds of miles ; yet none of them 

 bears the marks of having passed down or across a 

 valley, or even over roches moutonnees. 



That the Antarctic continent has a flat and even 

 surface, the character of the icebergs shows beyond 

 dispute. But this, it will be urged, does not prove 

 that this surface may not be greatly elevated ; in 

 other words, that it may not be a flat elevated plateau. 

 This, of course, is true ; but it is evidently far more 

 likely that this region, nearly 3000 miles across, should 

 consist of flat, dismembered land, or groups of low 

 islands separated and surrounded by shallow seas, 

 than that it should consist of a lofty plateau without 

 either hills, valleys, or mountain-ridges. In this case 

 it may be that the greater part of the Antarctic ice-cap 

 rests on land actually below sea-level, viz., on the floor 

 of the shallow seas surrounding those island-groups. 

 We know that such a condition of things was actually 

 the case in regard to the great ice-sheet of North- 

 western Europe during the glacial epoch. A glance 

 at the Chart of the path of the ice given in ' Climate 

 and Time,' p. 448 (and which is also reproduced in 

 Chapter VIII. of the present volume), will show that 



