the scene of disturbance, the ice-berg is launched into life." Some of the bergs may be seen sailing majestically in long lines out of the ice-fjords, to be wafted in various directions by the winds and currents. Some of them ground near the fjords, where they remain for months or even years and are only removed by "calving," or pieces breaking off from them.

ous almost level field of ice, concealing or obliterating all indications of hill and valley, without a single break, for upwards of twelve hundred miles from north to south, and four hundred from east to west. Its thickness is unknown; but when it is remembered that every square mile contains six hundred and forty acres, that the weight of an inch of rain is upwards of one hundred tons per acre, and that, even exclusive of the pressure, the specific gravity of ice is about eight-ninths of that of water, it will be seen that the unbroken ice-field of Greenland must have an area of upwards of three hundred million acres, and a weight of more than twenty-two inches. A small portion is given off seven thousand million tons for every inch of its thickness.

Dr. H. Rink, of Copenhagen, whose long residence in the country entitles his opinion to the greatest respect, has calculated the yearly precipitation, including both snow and rain, at ten inches, and the discharge of ice, in the form of glaciers, at by evaporation, but the greatest discharge is probably in the streams of water which From the facts that ice-bergs are rare pour out beneath the glaciers, both in on the east coast, and that no stones or summer and winter. We do not appear other indications of land are found on to be in possession of sufficient data to the surface of the ice-field, it is thought justify an opinion as to how far the unitprobable that there is no high land in the ed yearly discharge of ice, water, and vainterior, but that the ice slopes continu- pour at present equals the annual precipously from east to west; and as the sur-itation. It is obvious that the question face of the vast accumulation of ice in the of the increase or decrease of the existing known interior, so far from anywhere at- ice-sheet hinges on this point. taining the height of the circumscribing The sub-glacial streams, thickly loadland, can only be seen by climbing to con-ed with mud from the grinding of the glasiderable elevations on the latter, it is be- ciers on the rocks over which they travel, lieved by Dr. Brown that the bare surface discolour the sea for miles, and finally deof the country, were its glacial covering posit on the bottom a thick coating of removed, would resemble a huge shallow the finest material, in which Arctic mavessel with high walls around it -a ves-rine animals burrow in great numbers. sel now filled with ice, which slowly flows Some of the inlets, formerly quite open off, in the form of glaciers, through the for boats, are now so choked up with enormous lips in the zone of mountain-bergs - mainly, it is thought, in conseland forming its rim. Dr. Brown is of quence of the deposits of subglacial mud opinion that a great inlet once stretched that going up them is never thought of at across the island from Jacobshavn ice-present.

fjord, as represented on the old maps, but Occasionally, without a breath of wind that it is now choked up with consoli-stirring, ice-bergs are seen "shooting out dated bergs.

It can scarcely be doubted that in the course of ages, the glaciers, slowly travelling seaward, grind down the bottoms of the valleys to the sea-level, and thus convert the valleys themselves into fjords, such as are so prevalent on the coasts of northern countries in general. When a glacier reaches the sea, it grooves its way along the submarine bottom for a considerable distance-in some instances upwards of a mile- until it is stopped by the buoying action of the water, through which, and not the force of gravity, a portion is ultimately broken off and an iceberg is formed. The ice," says Dr. Brown, "groans and creaks, then there is a crashing, then a roar like the discharge of a park of artillery, and with a monstrous regurgitation of waves, felt far from

of an inlet, propelled, in all probability, by the waves produced by a fresh berg being detached from the glacier up the fjord.

The bergs when aground have always a slight movement, which stirs up the food on which the seals largely subsist; hence the neighbourhood of such bergs is a favourite haunt of these animals, and thus too often tempts the native fisherman, who not unfrequently loses his life by falling ice. "When we would row between two bergs," says Dr. Brown, “to avoid a few hundred yards' circuit, the rowers would pull with muffled oars and bated breath. Orders would be given in whispers, and even were Sabine's gull or the great auk to swim past, I scarcely think that even the chance of gaining such a prize would tempt us to run the risk of firing, and thereby endangering

our lives by the reverberations bringing | carrying a block of rock that, even at a disdown pieces of crumbling ice hanging over- tance, looked as large as a good-sized house. head. A few strokes and we are out of Greenland, though so intensely cold, and danger; and then the pent-up feelings of apparently so cheerless, is full of interest our stolid fur-clad oarsmen find vent in to the naturalist, and by no means withlusty huzzahs! Yet, when viewed out of out profit for the merchant. The outskirtdanger, this noble assemblage of ice pal- ing land supports a luxuriant growth of aces, hundreds in number being seen at from 300 to 400 species of plants, some of sch times from the end of Jakobshavn which ascend to the height of 4,000 feet; Kirk, was a magnificent sight; and the many species of seals, and whales, and fish voyager might well indulge in some poetic sport in the waters, which are also occu frenzy at the view. The noon-day heat had pied by invertebrate animals and seamelted their sides; and the rays of the red weeds; every rock swarms with waterevening sun glancing askance among them fowl, whilst land-birds from the south visit would conjure up fairy visions of castles of the country as a nesting-place; countless silver and cathedrals of gold. . . . Sudden- herds of reindeer browse in some of its vally there is a swaying, a moving of the wa-leys; the bark of the fox is to be heard ter, and our fairy palace falls to pieces, or, even in the depth of winter; and the powith an echo like a prolonged thunder-clap, lar bear may be seen all the year round. it capsizes, sending the waves in breakers The Danes, at their first visit, found a huup to our very feet." man population there of 30,000; and withOrdinary Alpine glaciers, like those of in their own possessions there is at presSwitzerland, flowing down mountain gorg-ent a healthy, intelligent, civilized race of es, receive great accumulations of rocky hunters of not less than 10,000 souls. Exdébris on each side, which are termed lat-clusive of home consumption, the annual eral moraines. In the frequent case of two such gorges uniting in one at a lower level, what may be called the adjacent or inner laterals become one, and form a medial moraine. Not unfrequently portions of the material thus accumulated on the surface fall through the crevasses, and, reaching the bottom, participate there in the general downward motion, and with the débris the glacier has dislodged from the rocky surface on which it travels, form the moraine profonde or basal moraine. If, as in the Alps, the glacier terminates without reaching the sea, most of the matter thus transported is deposited at its foot, and forms a terminal moraine.

exports of the settlements amounted in 1835 to 9.569 barrels of seal-oil, 47.809 seal skins, 1,714 fox skins, 34 bear skins, 191 dog skins, 3,437 lbs. of eider down, 5,206 lbs. of feathers, 439 lbs. of narwhal ivory, 51 lbs. of walrus ivory, and 3,596 lbs. of whalebone.

Geologists have long taught that, at least, the west coast of Greenland is slowly sinking below the sea. This doctrine is confirmed by Dr. Brown, who recapitulates the principal points of the evidence on which it rests. The following are amongst the facts he enumerates:- Near the end of the last century a small rocky island was observed to be entirely subThe glaciers of Greenland are much more merged at springtide high-water, yet on it simple. They bring no débris from the were the remains of a house, rising six feet interior; and the short valleys through above the ground; fifty years later the which they reach the sea rarely unite. submergence had so far increased that the The surface material which is inconsid- ruins alone were ever left above water. erable, and seldom takes the form of a me- The foundations of an old storehouse, dial moraine-together with that at its built on an island in 1776, are now dry base, is floated off by the detached bergs, only at low water. The remains of native which not unfrequently capsize in the in-houses are in one locality seen beneath lets, and thus deposit, at least, the greater the sea. In 1758 the Moravian Mission espart of their burthen before reaching the tablishment was founded about two miles open sea. Hence, could the submarine surface be inspected, it would in all probability be found to consist of tenacious clay, imbedding a long line of boulders, shells. and bones of seals and other marine animals. This matter must frequently be rearranged by the enormous momentum of ice-bergs grounding on it. Dr. Brown mentions the case of a berg which, in 1867, he observed at the mouth of the Waygatz,

from Fiskernæsset, but in thirty years they were obliged to move, at least once, the posts on which they rested their large omiaks, or seal-skin boats. Some of the posts may yet be seen under water. The dwellings of several Greenland families. who lived on Savage Point from 1721 to 1736, are now overflowed by every tide. In one locality, the ruins of old Greenland houses are only to be seen at low water.

A blubber house, originally built on a rocky islet about a furlong from the shore in Disco Bay, had to be removed in 1867, as the floor was flooded at every tide, in consequence of the gradual sinking of the islet a fact which had long been recognized. An adjacent island, on which the natives formerly encamped in considerable numbers during summer, has become so diminished in size through slow subsidence that there is at present room for no more than three or four skin tents. Dr. Brown estimates the rate of submergence at not more than five feet in a century.

now in progress as being by no means local, but shared by the entire country. He admits, however, that the district between the Danish settlements and the south coast has not been examined; so that he can only be held to have proved that, since the advent of the species of shellfish now living in the adjacent sea, those parts of Greenland, now known to be sinking were at a much lower level than they are at present; that, even then, the country was the scene of ice action, which, by depositing glacier-clay, furnished a habitat for the marine mollusks whose shells are now found in it; that after this Proofs of an upward movement appear deposition the district rose slowly above to be equally well established on the north the sea, and attained a sub-aërial height coast, where Dr. Kane, in 1855, observed of many hundred feet; that if the process and described a series of old sea-beaches of elevation resembled that in the north rising one over another to considerable of the island, it was broken by protracted heights above the sea-level. "I have periods of intermittence, during which the studies," he says, "of these terraced successive terraces were formed; and that, beaches at various points on the northern at length there set in a movement in the coast of Greenland. As these strange contrary direction, which is still in progstructures wound in long spirals round ress. It does not appear from the evidence the headlands of the fjords, they reminded me of the parallel roads of Glen Roya comparison which I make rather from general resemblance than ascertained analogies of causes."*

There seems a tendency to regard this upward movement in the north, as well as the downward movement in the west, as still in progress; in fact, to consider Greenland as a sort of lever, having its fulcrum somewhere between the two regions in which the opposite changes of relative level have been observed. There is nothing inconsistent in the hypothesis that a subsidence in one region synchronises with elevation in another at no very great distance; and, indeed, it is believed by, at least, most geologists that an instance of the kind is furnished by Sweden, which is rising along the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, sinking in the extreme south of the peninsula, but undergoing no change in the district of which Stockholm may be regarded as the centre. Dr. Brown, however, whilst cordially accepting the evidence of upheaval in North Greenland, believes that movement to be a thing of the past, that the whole island participated in it, and that he has detected unmistakable proofs, along the whole extent of the Danish colonies—and, in one instance, 500 feet above the sea of a striated clay, containing shells belonging to species still living in the neighbouring sea. like manner, he regards the subsidence

"Arctic Explorations," vol. ii. p. 81.

at present before us that the downward movement is necessarily shared by the north, or, indeed, that the elevation has yet ceased there. On these points we need further information.

It is obvious that whilst the changes just described take us slowly and far back into antiquity, they fail to reach the commencement of the glacial condition of the country. The clays, which, notwithstanding the present slow subsidence, are still 500 feet above the sea-level, were due to glacial agency, and must have been deposited when the areas in which they occur were far below the sea. They are occupied, too, by shells of the same species as now live in Greenland waters, and thus denote that the climate has not changed.

The existing ice-sheet which so completely covers the land-concealing alike the tops of the mountains and the valleys which separate them is eloquent of time. It represents, not the accumulated total snows of ages, but the sum of the annual surpluses the remnants of the yearly precipitation which the conjoined actions of evaporation, ice-flow, and sub-glacial streams have failed to remove the hoarded capital resulting from the excess of ice-income over expenditure in every form. And yet this income is estimated at no more than ten inches annually, so that the yearly savings must have been In very inconsiderable in themselves - probably an inch or two, at most. Their aggregate is vast, merely because the time of accumulation has been very protracted.

It is obvious that the geologist's chance | istence, but ripened their fruits. Ivies of finding fossils is limited to the out- and vines twined round their trunks, beskirting land. Here, however, and espe- neath them grew ferns having broad fronds, cially near Atanekerdluk, on the western and with them were mingled several evcoast. opposite Disco Island, in latitude ergreen shrubs. 70° N. termed North Greenland by Dr. Heer- he has been eminently successful, as has been already remarked.

From the Report of Professor Heer, it appears that the specimens collected by Mr. Whymper and Dr. Brown contained 89 species of plants, of which 30 were entirely new to science; that we are now acquainted with a total of 137 species from the same beds and localities; and that the deposits which yielded them belong to what is known to the geologist as the Miocene age- — a period very remotely ancient, no doubt, when measured by even the largest unit employed in human history, but not very far back in the vast antiquity of the world. It was separated from the close of that era in which our chalk beds were formed, by a period termed the Eocene, and, in all probability, by an earlier but unrepresented interval. It was long prior, on the other hand, to the first appearance in the world of any existing species of quadrupeds, and though some of the kinds of shell-fish now living were also living then, upwards of fifty per cent. of the species forming the present molluscous fauna date from times less ancient than those represented by the plantbeds of Atanekerduk.

They were by no means confined to high latitudes, for at least forty-six of the species have been found as fossils in Central Europe. So far as is at present known, six of them grew no farther south than the Baltic, ten have been found in Switzerland, seven in Austria, four in France, seventeen in Italy, six in Greece, and four in Devonshire. In fact, these extinct old Miocene plants had a much wider geographical range than is enjoyed by their allies in the present day; whence Professor Heer has concluded that the temperature of the northern hemisphere, at least from Greece to within a few degrees of the Pole, was much more uniform during the Miocene era than it is at present. The mean annual temperature of North Greenland was, he believes, 30°, and of Central Europe 10°, higher than it is now.

A vegetation so luxuriant was probably the home of a large and varied amount of animal life; though, up to this time, their remains have been but very sparingly found. Professor Heer, however, has detected two fossil insects one of them a beetle - amongst the leaves.

Such, it has been well remarked, was the variety, luxuriance, and abundance of this old Miocene flora, that if land extended at that time from Greenland to the Pole, it was probably occupied by at least many of the same species of plants.

From The Spectator.

"OUR TYRANT."

THE Tory journals are doing Mr. Glad

Plants of the same kind and of the same age have been found also in Iceland, and even in Spitzbergen in latitude 78° 56m. N., and are wonderfully calcualted to revolutionize our notions of the climate of the Arctic regions. That it cannot always have been frigid, is evident from the facts that of the fossils in question considerably more than half the number were trees, while at present no trees exist in any part of Greenland, though its south-stone good service. The Abolition of ern point, Cape Farewell, is in latitude Purchase by Warrant in the teeth of the 59° 47m. N., or fully 700 miles farther south Lord's refusal to accept the measure has than Atanekerdluk; that amongst them driven them wild with rage, or as is more there were upwards of thirty different probable with hope of a good cry; and kinds of cone-bearing trees, including sev- they are denouncing the Premier after a eral species allied to the gigantic Welling- fashion new to our political warfare. Sartonia at present growing in California; casm has been abandoned for invective, that the other trees were beeches, oaks, which in its violence and personality would planes, poplars, maples, walnuts, limes, a hardly be justified if he had overridden magnolia, hazel, blackthorn, holly, log- Parliament by an illegal plébiscite. The wood, and hawthorn; that they were not Standard, in particular, has hardly a topic represented by leaves merely-which oc- except the insolence of the Premier curred, however, in vast profusion - but towards the country. He is no longer by fossil flowers and fruits, including even "the People's William," as he was denomitwo cones of the magnolia, thus proving nated in ridicule all through last session; that they did not maintain a precarious ex-but "our tyrant," the imperious master

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changed him for a more earnest-minded successor. Mr. Gladstone was in earnest, but the only tyranny displayed was the tyranny of a fact, that the Commons are stronger than the Lords and the porcelain jar might just as well complain of the bronze vase for breaking it in a collision. It is very hard for the porcelain, no doubt, that it cannot have both splendour and strength, but complaint of laws which cannot be changed becomes children rather than serious politicians. The House of Commons when resolved is the ultimate ruler of the United Kingdom, that cardinal fact usually hidden by our cumbrous form of procedure, has once more asserted itself in an unusual, though not unprecedented form, and that is all.

of a mechanical majority, the unscrupulous antagonist of Parliament, the violator of the Constitution, the "stern despot" who coerces one House in order to compel it to coerce the other. Indeed we are not quite sure if he does not coerce the electorate too. No foreigner reading these diatribes would dream that Mr. Gladstone is but the president of a stiffnecked Cabinet, in which one-half the members are Peers, and three of them at least, counting Lord Hartington, who is in all but seat a Peer-great Peers, as unlikely wantonly to insult their order as any men living-that Mr. Gladstone reigns so far as he does reign only by daily re-election; that his despotism is derived entirely from the steady support of the House of Commons; that he could be dismissed or compelled to appeal to the Our concern, however, to-day is not country by a single vote; that the tyranny with the Army Bill, but with the effect complained of, if it exists at all, is the which this stream of invective will have tyranny of the representative body, and upon Mr. Gladstone's political position. not of any single man, We deny that it It will unquestionably strengthen it. The exists at all in any greater degree than Premier's immense majority both in the at any former period. What has happened Commons and the country is made up of about the Army Bill has happened since three divisions, so separate and so well-de1832 about a hundred bills, there has fined as almost to deserve the name of been a collision of opinions between the parties. There are the Whigs, who do not Commons and the Lords, and the Lords, personally like him, or at least feel toafter a struggle in which they seemed for wards him no personal attachment; but an instant victorious, have been compelled who recognize in him the only possible to give way. The form of compulsion con- Premier, who know that he is on the econstantly differs; now it is a warning speech omic side of his head a Whig in his respect from the Government leader; now it is a for property, and who feel that for intelsharp vote of the Commons; now it is an lectual as well as traditional reasons, they appeal to the electorate, which the Lords cannot become Tories. These men may are not bound to respect any more than in some degree be moved by aristocratic they are bound to respect the Ministry; influence, but as they have no personal now it is an appeal to some half-obsolete liking to get rid of. the invective, however power of the Crown; but the reality is lavish, makes no difference to them, rather always the same, the representative House, provokes them, as showing a want of reonce provoked, invariably announces its spect for an office they do not desire to own supremacy in the constitutional ma- degrade. Then come the great body of chine. Mr. Gladstone had literally no middle-class Liberals, the old electorate, option. Not to coerce the Lords was to who have been fascinated by Mr. Gladcoerce the Commons to continue purchase stone's lofty genius for finance, who are in spite of their repeated votes for its pleased with the high moral ideal which abolition, and this the Premier has as little he sets before them, and who are on all the power as the will to do. His ministry essential matters heartily in accord with would have died of its apparent inefficiency. his policy. It is this body which gives The constantly repeated assertion that Mr. Gladstone what may be called his perLord Palmerston would have arrested the sonal strength, a strength he might not collision is altogether beside the question. derive either from Whigs or Radicals. Lord Palmerston whenever sincerely in- These men, though far from hostile to terested, was much more dictatorial than Lords as Lords, or to the Upper Chamber Mr. Gladstone, as witness the Divorce when quiescent, are permanently and Act; but Lord Palmerston as a rule, was steadily determined that whenever a crisis the minister of a compromise just then de- comes between the two Houses their repsired by the country, and if he did move, resentatives shall rule. We cannot rehad no occasion to urge his measures upon member a case since 1832 in which they a majority of Peers, who would have have faltered or in which they have passed anything rather than have ex- not expressed a deep annoyance when