NOTES ON ICE PHYSICS 
By Charles S. Wright, B.A. 
These notes deal with a very few only of the subdivisions 
falling under the heading ' Ice Physics/ and are intended 
merely to give a popular survey of this interesting and 
by no means unimportant branch of scientific work. 
As a practically new field of research, in the nature 
of things the work was largely observational in character, 
and until all the data are fully worked out all conclusions 
must be considered provisional and incomplete. 
A consideration of the important place in the scheme 
of things occupied by the molecule known as H^O would 
certainly lead one to give it the nickname of ' the mighty 
molecule.' 
The climates of the earth are almost entirely con- 
trolled by water in one of its three forms. In the Northern 
Hemisphere we have long realised the effect of the Gulf 
Stream on our own lands ; what then is the effect on 
the Southern Hemisphere of a stream of huge icebergs 
ever breaking off from the Antarctic continent and drifting 
northwards into low latitudes ? Be it remembered that 
an iceberg at melting point is several times as efficient 
a reservoir of cold as an equal volume of water at tlie 
same temperature. 
