Glaciers and Glacial Radiants — Claypole. 87 
in square miles cover so great a part of the surface of the earth 
as did the North American ice-sheet. 
Here agaiii as in the Western World we are confronted with 
the fact that the great mass of the ice was found where the 
precipitation was, or at least is now, greatest. The damp 
climate of western Europe is the most favorable place in the 
world for the production of glaciers. The warm west winds off 
the Atlantic, moisture-laden from the gulf-stream, on striking 
the colder highlands of Scotland and Norway pour down their 
"watery contents in so great a quantity in some spots that these 
surpass in rainfall all others in the temperate regions During 
the glacial era the intenser cold changed this to snow and on 
the mountain-tops and sides the mass accumulated until the 
confluent glaciers became one great ice-sheet which relieved it- 
self in all directions along the lines of easiest flow. 
In a less degree the same was true of the mountains of west- 
ern Germany and of the Alps of Switzerland. The heavy rain- 
fall of to-day was then a heavy snow-fall and the glaciers grew 
under this abundant supply to dimensions which would be 
incredible were they not established beyond all possibility of 
doubt by the classical investigations of Guyot and his comrades 
in that country. At that time tlie now puny glacier of the 
Rhone concealing itself in the secluded recesses between the 
Bernese Oberlaud and the St. Gotthard massif, so that to find it 
is not easy, grew to dimensions so vast as to fill the whole valley 
of the Rhone down to Martigny; to turn the angle formed by 
the opposition of the Mt. filanc group; to bend round and enter 
the lake of Geneva; to till that lake from end to end and down 
to the verv bottom; to rise at its western end high up the slope 
of the facing Jura and failing to pass this huge barrier to split 
and send one fork to the north-east over the lake of Neufchatel 
and the plains of northern Switzerland and the other to the 
south-west along the present course of the Rhone, through the 
narrow gorge, where the mountains almost dam the river and 
<xf which Julias Caesar has given us the earliest and best de- 
scription, down almost to the site of the present city of Lyons — 
a total distance from the St. Gotthard of more than 200 miles. 
When this was the gigantic size of the Rhone glacier we may 
readily believe that the other glens and straths of Switzerland 
were not behindhand in ice-production and that their united 
