1879J 
7 
Relations t& that of the Glacial Epoch. 
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 Capt. Smithers, for example, did 
not actually measure the iceberg to which we have re- 
ferred, 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 assertion that a 
person is, for example, 5 feet 6 inches or 5 feet 8 inches 
in height would not imply that this was his measured 
height ; but if we asserted that he was 5 feet 6^- inches 
or 5 feet 8J inches high, we should necessarily convey this 
impression. In like manner Captain Smithers, by assigning 
to the iceberg an altitude so particular as that of 580 feet, 
distinctly conveys the impression that such was the height 
obtained by aCtual measurement. Similarly we conclude 
that the captains of the Queen of Nations and the Agneta 
actually measured the icebergs which they respectively de- 
clared to be 720 and 960 feet high. 
In reply it may perhaps be asserted that no record of an 
iceberg 500 or 600 feet in height is to be found in the log- 
books of the Navy, and that all those instances of enormous 
icebergs have been given by masters of merchant vessels, 
who as a rule are not so competent to make accurate 
measurements. It is doubtless true that the latter are 
generally not so well qualified for such work as naval 
officers ; but it is hardly credible that they should all 
have gone so far astray in their measurements as to estimate 
heights at 500 and 600 feet which in reality were only 
200 feet. Now, if but one berg 500 feet high has ever been 
seen in the Southern Ocean, it is proved that even twice 
iqco feet is not the limit of the thickness of the Antarctic ice. 
But it is not true that no naval officer has met an iceberg 
of those enormous dimensions ; for, as we have already seen, 
Mr. Towson states that one of our most celebrated and 
talented naval surveyors informed him that he had met ice- 
bergs in the southern regions 800 feet high. It is, however, 
not to be wondered at that so few naval officers have seen 
such bergs, for they are of very rare occurrence. They have 
been met with chiefly in latitudes that are traverssd by 
thousands of merchant ships for one vessel belonging to 
the Navy. And perhaps not one out of every ten thousand 
merchantmen has ever fallen in with one of the great ice- 
islands we now speak of. 
