Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1876 — The Decay of Glaciers. [ARTICLE]

The Decay of Glaciers.

From a comprehensive article in Harper's by John Muir, upon the above subject, we extract the following: A glacier is a current of ice derived from snow. Complete glaciers of the first order take their rise on the mountains, and descend into the sea, just as all complete rivers of the first order do. In North Greenland the snow supply and general climatic conditioqs are such that its glaciers pour directly into the ocean, and so Undoubtedly did those of the Pacific slope during the flush times of the glacial epoch; but now the world is so warm and the snow crop so scanty nearly all the glaciers left alive have melted to mere hints of their former selves. The Lyell Glacier is now less than a mile long; yet, setting out from its frontal moraine, we may trace its former course on grooved and polished surfaces, and by immense canons and moraines, a distance es more than forty miles. The glaciers of Switzerland are in a like decaying condition as compared with their former grandeur; so also are those of Norway, Asia and South America. They have come to resemble the short rivers of the eastern slope of the Sierra that flow out into the hot plains and are dried up. According to the Schlagintweit brothers the glaciers of Switzerland meß at an average elevation above the level of the sea of 7,414 feet. The glacier of Grindewald melts at less than 4,000 feet; that of the Aar at about 6,000. The Himalaya Glacier, in which the Ganges takes its rise, does not, according to Capt. Hodgeson, descend below 12,914 feet. The average elevation at which the glaciers of the Sierra melt is not far from 11,000 feet above sea-level. Dr. Clay Maddux broke the glass In two show-cases while trying to cowhide a Baltimore storekeeper, and not a single blow reached the intended recipient. The damage that the awkward physician had to pay was about SIOO. —Two sisters in Brownsville, Ala.—one married and the other single, but engaged—had a dispute, the other day, upon thftpersonal beauty of husband and lover, when one gouged out the other’s eye with pair of store-tongs. *r**'* [