IMMENSITY OF POLAR ICE.
The quantity of solid matter that is drifted out of the Polar Seas through one opening—Davis’s Straits—alone, and during a part of the year only, covers to the depth of seven feet an area of 300,000 square miles, and weighs not less than 18,000,000,000 tons. The quantity of water required to float and drive out this solid matter is probably many times greater than this. A quantity of water equal in weight to these two masses has to go in. The basin to receive these inflowing waters, i. e. the unexplored basin about the North Pole, includes an area of 1,500,000 square miles; and as the outflowing ice and water are at the surface, the return current must be submarine.
These two currents, therefore, it may be perceived, keep in motion between the temperate and polar regions of the earth a volume of water, in comparison with which the mighty Mississippi in its greatest floods sinks down to a mere rill.—Maury.