210 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



specific gravity of ice and water. But a berg such as 

 that recorded by Captain Clark, 500 feet high and 3 

 miles long, may be relied upon as having the propor- 

 tionate thickness under water. The same may be 

 said of the one seen by Captain Smithers, which was 

 580 feet high, and so large that it was taken for an 

 island. 



It may be here remarked that a berg does not stand 

 higher out of the water because the lightest side 

 happens to be uppermost. The height above water 

 is determined by the mean density of the berg, and is 

 the same no matter how the various densities may be 

 distributed through the mass. It would be the same 

 though the berg were turned upside down. This 

 follows as a necessary consequence from the fact that 

 the amount of water displaced by the berg is equal 

 to its weight, and of course it is the same whatever 

 side be uppermost. 



To evade the force of the evidence derived from the 

 testimony of the icebergs, it is asserted by some that 

 the heights thus recorded are mere guesses, and not 

 the result of actual measurement. But such an opinion 

 is in direct contradiction to the express declaration of 

 Admiral Fitzroy, who collected the evidence on the 

 subject. He states that "by angular and reliable 

 measurements some of them have been found to be 

 six or eight hundred feet high and several miles in 

 circumference." 



But more than this, if Captain Smithers, for example, 

 did not actually measure the iceberg to which we have 

 referred, he could not have known that its height was 

 580 rather than 600 feet. The very fact that he stated 

 it to be 580, and not 500 or 600, or even 550 feet, 

 surely implies that he really measured it. The asser- 

 tion that a person is 5 feet 6 inches or 5 feet 8 inches 



