90 Glaciers and Glacial Radiants—Clay pole. 
bours are unfortunately for the most part situated where they 
are of little use for commercial purposes. As in America it 
would be a priceless boon to the Pacific coast if a few of the- 
unused inlets of Alaska could be transferred to California, so in 
Europe both France and Spain would be immensely benefited 
by buying and removing at almost any cost a few of the Nor¬ 
wegian fiords or some of the deep bays of western Ireland now 
lying nearly idle. But however unsuited for the purposes of 
trade these northern inlets may be the geologist cannot help 
reading in them the story of a former higher level of the north¬ 
ern lands and a striking evidence of the unstable condition of 
the earth’s crust. He watches ice-laden Greenland slowly sink¬ 
ing beneath its load and sees Norway now relieved of its icy 
burden as slowly regaining some of its former position and is 
tempted to ask if the load and the movement do not stand to- 
one another in the relation of cause and effect. 
Granting then this former greater elevation of Norway and 
Sweden their adaptation to the purpose of collecting snow and 
feeding glaciers was largely enhanced. And if, as seems likely 
from the structure of the basins of some of the Swiss lakes, the 
Alps also possessed greater hight then than now, their impor¬ 
tance as a glacial radiant must have been proportionately greater. 
Regarding the eastern coast of Asia we have at present al¬ 
most no information bearing on the present subject. But what 
slight details can be obtained seem to indicate a development 
of glacial phenomena to a degree that is considerable but less than 
on the Atlantic coast of Europe. Indeed the evidence seems to 
show a smaller production of glaciers and less glacial action on 
the two shores of the Pacific than on the tw r o shores of the At¬ 
lantic. This may be due to the fact that the precipitation along 
the Pacific sea-board is less than along that of the Atlantic and 
this again is in accordance with the small dimensions and less 
effect of the Japan current—the Kiwu-Siwu—the return equa¬ 
torial current of the Pacific when compared with the gulf _ 
stream of the Atlantic. The coasts of Kamtschatka and Japan 
though considerably indented do not by any means show a sys¬ 
tem of profound inlets such as those that fringe the coasts of 
Alaska, Maine and western Europe. In so far as these parts 
then of the evidence are concerned we do not find there the 
