STUDDED BERGS. 
455 
vations, and had withal so strik- 
ing a form, that it could have no 
other nickname hut the Giraffe. 
In my efforts to arrive at the 
cause of this strange leprosy, I 
once only found the bottom of the 
cavities filled with slimy diotoma- 
ceous life. It is possible that a 
vital action had determined this 
local thawing ; hut its symmet- 
rical character still remains a puzzle. 
It was very interesting to follow these secondary 
forms in their changes. Nothing can he more impos- 
ing than the rotation of a herg. I have often watched 
one, rocking its earth-stained sides in steadily-deepen- 
ing curves, as if to gather energy for some desperate 
gymnastic feat ; and then turning itself slowly over in 
a monster somerset, and vibrating as its head rose into 
the new element, like a leviathan shaking the water 
from its crest. It was impossible not to have sugges- 
tions thrust upon me of their agency in modifying the 
geological disposition of the earth’s surface. 
We were in an archipelago of stranded and of mov- 
ing bergs. In some that had undergone this change 
of equilibrium, the valleys were studded with irregu- 
larly angular and rounded rocks, and a detrital paste 
