GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 270, 11 May 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS.

THEIR RELATIONSHIP. The line above which the ground is always covered with snow is called the snow line." This "snow line" has not the same height even round the sides of the same mountain. Where the air is very dry and the summer very warm and bright, the snow line is very high. When moist winds blow against the mountains much snow falls, and a cloudy sky keeps it trom being much melted away, even m summer. But the same snow does not always lie oil the mountain. The weight of the snow above presses the snow below downwards till it comes where the air is warm enough to melt it. It then runs down the sides of the mountain. Many, streams of the mountain are thus formed and fed. The snow lower down .does not,always melt into streams. You ■ have seen the snow on housetops meltI ing and running down as water. But you have also seen it. while trickling down, again freezing and forming icicles. So in dam]) and changeable mountain districts the snows form huge icicles. These slide along the hollows or valleys in the sides , of the mountains, the lower ends melting away, and the upper ends fed by the snows above. They are called "glaciers," and their ice is often hundreds of feet thick, and their ends steep as walls. In the cold lands near the Poles the glaciers slide down into 110 warm vales, and therefore do not melt. They creep along till they enter the sea like ice rivers. Even then they do not always melt, for though the sea/remains unfrozen, it is still colder than -fresh-water ice. As the glaciers slide into the sea pieces are broken off by the rolling waters. These float away, and are called icebergs. Icebergs which have come from Greenland are often met by ships sailing across to the St. Lawrence or New York. Some icebergs have been Seen of which the tops were more than jioOfJt above tfes water. Now, ice is so much lighter than water that for every foot above the water line there are about Bft below. From the bottom to the top of such icebergs must have been about 2250 ft. From the north polar seas there are currents which move southwards. There is one fed by the various-channels which enter Baffin Bay, and flows south by Davis Strait, passing along the coast of Newfoundland. This is the iceberg's by which it crosses the track of shipping, and finally drifts into the warmer latitudes, where it melts and disappears.