A glacier is not only busy grinding out a bed for itself through the mountains; it bears on its back down the valley enormous quantities of fallen rock, earth and stones, which have tumbled from the cliffs on either side. In this way blocks of rock as big as a house may be carried for many miles, and dropped where the ice melts. Thousands of tons of loose stones and mud are every year moved on the ice from the far snowy mountains away down into the valleys to which the glaciers reach.
The largest glaciers in the world are those of the polar regions. North Greenland, in truth, lies buried under one great glacier, which pushes long tongues of ice down the valleys and away out to sea. When a glacier advances into the sea, portions of it break off and float away as icebergs. So enormous are the glaciers in these cold tracts that the icebergs derived from them often rise several hundred feet above the waves which beat against their sides. And yet, in all such cases, about seven times more of the ice is immersed under water than the portion, large as it is, which appears above. You can realize how this happens if you take a piece of ice, put it in a tumbler of water, and watch how much of it rises out of the water. Sunk deep in the sea, therefore, the icebergs float to and fro until they melt, sometimes many hundreds of miles away from the glaciers which supplied them.
You will come to learn afterward that, once upon a time, there were glaciers in Britain. You will be able with your own eyes to see rocks which have been ground down and scratched by the ice, and big blocks of rock and piles of loose stones which the ice carried upon its surface. So that, in learning about glaciers, you are not merely learning what takes place in other and distant lands, you are gaining knowledge which you will be able by and by to make good use of, even in your own country.
SUNDAY READINGS.
SELECTED BY THE REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
[December 2.]
FROM THE “CHRISTIAN’S PATTERN.”
By THOMAS À KEMPIS.
“He that followeth me walketh not in darkness, saith the Lord.” These are the words of Christ, by which we are admonished that we ought to imitate his life and manners, if we would be truly enlightened and delivered from all blindness of heart.