The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers

by John Tyndall

387. Consider the conclusions at which we have now arrived. For every pound of tropical vapour, or for every pound of Alpine ice produced by the congelation of that vapour, an amount of heat has been expended by the sun sufficient to raise 5 lbs. of cast iron to its melting-point.

388. It would not be difficult to calculate approximately the weight of the Mer de Glace and its tributaries—to say, for example, that they contained so many millions of millions of tons of ice and snow. Let the place of the ice be taken by a mass of white-hot iron of quintuple the weight; with such a picture before your mind you get some notion of the enormous amount of heat paid out by the sun to produce the present glacier.

389. You must think over this, until it is as clear as sunshine. For you must never henceforth fall into the error already referred to, and which has entangled so many. So natural was the association of ice and cold, that even celebrated men assumed that all that is needed to produce a great extension of our glaciers is a diminution of the sun's temperature. Had they gone through the foregoing reflections and calculations, they would probably have demanded more heat instead of less for the production of a "glacial epoch." What they really needed were condensers sufficiently powerful to congeal the vapour generated by the heat of the sun.

[§ 57.] Glacier Theories.

390. You have not forgotten, and hardly ever can forget, our climbs to the Cleft Station. Thoughts were then suggested which we have not yet discussed. We saw the branch glaciers coming down from their névés, welding themselves together, pushing through Trélaporte, and afterwards moving through the sinuous valley of the Mer de Glace. These appearances alone, without taking into account subsequent observations, were sufficient to suggest the idea that glacier ice, however hard and brittle it may appear, is really a viscous substance, resembling treacle, or honey, or tar, or lava.

[§ 58.] Dilatation and Sliding Theories.

391. Still this was not the notion expressed by the majority of writers upon glaciers. Scheuchzer of Zürich, a great naturalist, visited the glaciers in 1705, and propounded a theory of their motion. Water, he knew, expands in freezing, and the force of expansion is so great, that thick bombshells filled with water, and permitted to freeze, are, as we know ([312]), shattered to pieces by the ice within. Scheuchzer supposed that the water in the fissures of the glaciers, freezing there and expanding with resistless force, was the power which urged the glacier downwards. He added to this theory other notions of a less scientific kind.

392. Many years subsequently, De Charpentier of Bex renewed and developed this theory with such ability and completeness, that it was long known as Charpentier's Theory of Dilatation. M. Agassiz for a time espoused this theory, and it was also more or less distinctly held by other writers. The glacier, in fact, was considered to be a magazine of cold, capable of freezing all water percolating through it. The theory was abandoned when this notion of glacier cold was proved by M. Agassiz to be untenable.