The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-09-28
ARE GLACIERS INcREAsINeq
Enormous Areas Are Covered by
 These Great Ice Rivers.
From the Chicago Inter-ocean.

From the Chicago Inter-Ocean.
 For the past five years physical geog- raphers have been giving a great deal of attention to the study of glaciers One question that has interested them very much is whether since the beginning of the historic period the glaciers of the world have augmented or diminished in area. No perfectly definite information with regard to this question has been obtained, though some general con clusions have been reached It is tra- ditional in the Alps, however, and some other regions that valleys now occupied by glaciers were formerly pasture lands On the whole, it is certain that for sey- eral centuries tifl quite recently there was a gradual increase in the area of glaciation.
 Glaciers everywhere are in a state of continuel movement--they are constant ly increasing in length or shortening Climatic variations are, of course, the cause of these ocllations, though the influence of climate upon glacial move ment is not yet fully understood. When the laws governing the movements of glaciers are we'll known the science of meteorology will be considerably fur ther advanced than 1t is today.
 There is good evidence to show that in the arctic regions in the eighteenth century and in part of the nineteenth an important extension of glaciers occurred In Spitzbergen, for example, harDors which whalers had often visited in the eyenteenth and early in the eighteenth centuries were filled later with glaciers, so that they could. no longer be used by shipping The advances Of glaciers In Iceland is said to have covered places that had formerly been the sites of farms and churches Glaciers seem. within the historic period, to have attained their greatest extent about 1860. Since that time few of them have grown to an import ant degree Many of them have diminish ed in size and others have entirely dis appeared This phenomenon has been ob- served in all parts of the world.
 Probably few persons imagine that glaciers cover so large an area as they do. The land surfaces which are today buried under glacial snow and Ice are supposed to be about 4,4S5,OOO square miles in extent, or more than one ana one half times as large as tue chi.eu States. This enormous mass of ice Is dis tributed very unevenly over the world, and nearly all of 1t IS in the polar re- edons. outside of the perpetually frozen north and south, only about ls'oOO square miles of surface are covered "ltn glaciers .,,.+
 If will be interesting to remember that there are two distinct types or slaclsii nhenomena-the Alpine and the polar ,Sne of the best examples of the Alpine tyne of glacier Is seen in the Mer de c;lace at Chamounix. A circle Of peaks surrounds a depression. which Is filled bv compacted snow and Ice known as neve This is the reservoir, the source of inc glacier. In this depression the snow either falling from the heavens or brought by winds and avalanches' accu- mulates to a great depth. is transferred into neye and begins to overflow oown inc mountain side. true glacier It IS thus seen that the characteristic Tea ture of Alpine glaciers is that they oc- cupv depressions in relation to the sur rounding topography
 On the other hand the polar glacier in- stead of being framed in depression occupies a culminating position above everything else. It is an enormous cap, or cupola. rising above the surrounding lands: it is the dominant feature far and wide Sucn. for example, is the great Ice cap of Greenland, and it is thought prob able that an enormously thick sheet Of ice may cover a continental mass of land in the antartic regions. and form the largest sheet of ice in the world.