Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/181

 That the glacier and the river are in effect the same; that between them there is a resemblance so complete that it is impossible to find in the latter a circumstance which does not exist in the former; and as the river drains the waters which fall upon the hillsides to the ocean, so the glacier drains the ice which forms from the snows on the mountain-sides down to the same level:

And he closes his argument with declaring the Law:—

"The conserving will of the Creator has employed for the permanence of His work the great Law of Circulation, which, strictly examined, is found to reproduce itself in all parts of Nature."

And, in illustration of this law, we see that the waters circulate from the ocean to the air by evaporation, from the air again to the earth in the form of dews and rains and snows, and from the earth back again to the ocean through the great rivers which have gathered up the little streams from every hillside and valley.

Now this law of Circulation is, in the icy regions of the Alps, of the lofty Himalayas, of the Andes, of the mountains of Norway and of Greenland, the same as in the lower and warmer regions of the earth, where the rivers drain the surface-water to the sea.

A glacier is in effect but a flowing stream of frozen water; and the river systems of the Temperate and Equatorial Zones become the glacier systems of the Arctic and Antarctic.

We have now seen that a part of the snow which falls upon the mountains is converted into ice, and this ice, strange though it seems, is movable. By what exact principle of movement has not yet been