246 DISCUSSIONS IN CLIMATOLOGY. 



minds to such an extraordinary condition of things, 

 Dr. Rink's description of the Greenland ice would 

 probably have been regarded as the extravagant 

 picture of a wild imagination. 



The Ice of the Glacial Epoch. — The same general 

 principles which we have been considering hold 

 equally true in reference to the ice of the Glacial 

 Epoch. Misapprehensions regarding the magnitude 

 of continental ice lie at the very root of the opposition 

 with which the Land-ice Theory of the chief pheno- 

 mena of the Glacial Epoch has had to contend. One 

 of the main objections urged against that theory is 

 the magnitude of the ice -sheet which it demands. 

 For example, to explain the glacial phenomena by the 

 theory of land ice, we are compelled to infer that the 

 whole of Scotland, Scandinavia, and the greater part 

 of North-western Europe, were not only covered with 

 ice, but covered to a depth of one or two thousand 

 feet. But not only are the mainlands glaciated, but 

 the islands of the Baltic, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, 

 and the Hebrides, bear equal evidence of ice having 

 passed over them. To explain this by the theory, 

 we have further to assume that the ice-sheet which 

 covered the land must have filled the Baltic, the 

 German Ocean, and the surrounding seas ; in short, 

 that all these regions were buried underneath one 

 continuous mass of ice. 



To one with inadequate conceptions of the nature 

 of continental ice, such a condition of things as this 

 may appear incredible ; but if the principles we have 

 been considering be correct, it follows as a necessary 

 consequence. If, during the Glacial Epoch, the quan- 

 tity of ice annually formed in North-western Europe 

 was much in excess of the quantity melted, enormous 

 ice-sheets must of necessity have been formed. 



