POLAR ICE NOT DUE TO ELEVATION. 77 



into which, or rather on to which, the Nares expedition 

 penetrated, the floe-ice seems to be in a fashion 

 impounded, so that it cannot escape freely to the 

 southern regions. In its prison it appears to continue 

 to drift and grow for ages, so that the name of Paleo- 

 chrystic Sea, or sea of ancient ice, given it by the 

 officers of the Nares expedition, is well deserved. 

 This mass seems, in fact, to be essentially a floating 

 n6v£, like that which covers Northern Greenland, in 

 everything save the peculiarities that come from its 

 formation on water. Its depth was not accurately 

 determined, but its perfect continuity and vast extent, 

 together with the great irregularities of its surface, 

 make it likely that it exceeds anything in the shape of 

 floe-ice found in the regions known to polar explorers. 

 It seems probable that the so-called Antarctic con- 

 tinent is nothing but an immense sheet of ice, such as 

 this Paleochrystic Sea would become if it were to 

 increase in depth until it fastened on the bottom of 

 the sea. Given a vast sheet of ice, wrapping the sur- 

 face of a circumpolar sea, supposing it to grow from 

 winter cold and snows more rapidly than the melting 

 of the water could remove it, the result would be that 

 the ice-sheet would in time cleave to the bottom of the 

 sea and become a true glacier, although any portion of 

 its bed was below the level of the water. In view of 

 the southward pointing of the southern continents, and 

 the gradual falling out of land towards the South Pole, 

 this seems to me to be a more likely hypothesis than 

 that which now finds expression in our geographies, 

 where the presence of eternal ice is taken as evidence 

 of a continental development of land in that region. 

 So far, I believe, we have no sufficient evidence of the 

 existence of any other surface than ice above the level 

 of the water in that so-called Antarctic continent." 



