The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related SciencesVarious
Science
The Journal of Geology, January-February 1893: A Semi-Quarterly Magazine of Geology and Related Sciences
Various
Geology -- Periodicals
So again, it is certain that a considerable part of the peripheral
drainage of glaciers takes place through tunnels beneath the ice.
It is reasonable to suppose that during the winter season, when the
drainage is slack, these tunnels tend to collapse in greater or less
degree, under the continued pressure of the ice and the "fattening" of
the glacier, so that in the early part of the next melting season the
contracted tunnels may be over-flooded by glacial waters. To the extent
that these tunnels become incompetent the water would become ponded
back in the crevasses and moulins by which the surface-water gains
access to them. They thus come to have something of the force of water
flowing in tubes, and may be presumed to be capable of forcing rounded
material to some considerable height, and of carrying ice-imbedded
boulders to any point reached by the stream. These tunnels probably
undulate with the bottom, and lodgment along them takes place wherever
enlargement permits.
Without, therefore, appealing to any upward cross currents within
the ice itself, it is possible to explain the transportation of the
drift from lower to higher altitudes. I have never seen phenomena of
this kind that seemed to call for any other explanation than these. I
am not prepared to say that there are no such phenomena. One of the
purposes of this article will have been accomplished, if it shall call
forth a critical statement of phenomena that require the assumption
of internal upward movements of the ice to account for them, and of
the criteria which distinguish such phenomena from those that may be
referred to upward basal movements such as are common to all streams
or to the exceptionally conditioned subglacial streams. That there are
upward internal movements in most streams is as much beyond question
as the existence of upward basal currents in rivers and glaciers, but
they are dependent chiefly upon the velocity of the current and the
irregularity of the bottom. Theoretically, as I understand, a stream
moving in a straight course on a perfectly smooth bottom would not
develop an upward cross current. Each lower layer would move slower
than that above it by reason of basal friction, but they would move
on in parallel lines. But if irregularity of bottom be introduced the
parallelism is obviously destroyed, and if the velocity be high so that
the momentum of the particles becomes great relative to their cohesion,
irregular internal movements will result, and these will often be of a
rotary nature in vertical planes bringing the basal parts of the fluid
to the surface or the reverse. For this reason rapid streams abound in
rotary currents, while slow streams do not.
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