Page:The fairy tales of science.djvu/285

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Moving Hands.


"The ice is here, the ice is there,
The ice is all around;
It cracks and growls, and roars and howls,
Like noises in a swound."


The attention of scientific men has of late been directed to the structure and movement of glaciers, those vast accumulations of ice that fill up the deep valleys of mountains whose summits are covered by perpetual snow. These glaciers form the moving lands which we are about to consider for the edification of our reader. The facts that we have to bring forward relating to these "gigantic icicles" will doubtless be new to the majority of our readers, as they have not yet found their way into elementary scientific treatises. In selecting our fairy tales from the copious budget of science, we have never lost sight of novelty, but have endeavoured to elucidate the most recent discoveries.

As we ascend a lofty mountain the air becomes colder and colder, and at a certain elevation we enter the regions of eternal snow. The vegetation