Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The work done within a few years upon the glaciers of Arctic America
has proved peculiarly fruitful in results. Here, again, the whole
subject is reviewed historically, and the name and work of each
observer are impartially noted. Much of the difficulty encountered by
the glacial theory arose, as we have seen, from the fact that only
mountain glaciers had been studied, so that many of the phenomena
produced by continental ice could not be explained. Professor
Fairchild says, as to this aspect: "More has been learned of the
structure, behavior, and work of our ancient ice sheets by the study
of the Alaskan glaciers during the last ten years, and especially by
the study of the Greenland ice cap during the last four years, than by
all the study of the Alpine glaciers for the seventy years since they
have been observed." Prominent among those who have worked in this
field are the names of Professors Chamberlain and Salisbury in
Greenland, and Professors H. F. Reid and I. C. Russell in Alaska;
other important contributors are Prof. W. P. Blake, the pioneer
geologist in Alaska, 1867; Dall and Baker, who discovered and named
the Malaspina Glacier in 1874; and John Muir, 1878, for whom the Muir
Glacier was named; Wright, Baldwin, Schwatka, Libbey, and others, and
Barton and Tarr in Greenland.
Professor Russell, in 1891, recognized and named a type of glacier
that was before unknown. In his studies on the Malaspina he found a
condition that does not occur, so far as yet observed, anywhere else
than on the northwest coast of America; this is where a number of
mountain glaciers debouch upon a low, flat coast plain, and unite to
form a great sluggishly moving sheet of ice. This particular
development he called the Piedmont type.
In closing his address, Professor Fairchild remarks that the word
"theory," as applied to the glacial origin of the drift and its
phenomena, may and should now be abandoned. The subject has passed
beyond the stage of theory, and is as well understood and as clearly
established as the volcanic origin of the cone of Vesuvius or the
sedimentary origin of stratified rocks.
* * * * *
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