Abstract
IN the paper on the “Mechanics of Glaciers,” which the author had the honour to read before the Geological Society of London in December last, it is stated that, after all allowance is made for work within the glacier due to the potential energy of the weightit of the ice-mass, “there remains to be accounted for a secondary differential motion, which has, it appears, not yet received a satisfactory explanation... the movement is greater (a) by day than by night, (b) in summer than in winter.” The present paper is intended as nothing more than a brief statement of the experimental evidence, upon the strength of which the explanation offered in the paper referred to has been put forward. I may say en passant that this investigation was suggested to me by a statement of Dr. Croll's (“Climate and Time,” p. 519) that, “We find that the heat applied to one side of a piece of ice will affect the thermal pile on the opposite side.” It occurred to me that the looseness of this statement was quite in keeping with the unphysical notions upon which the writer has built up what he styles his “molecular theory” of glacier motion, and I set to work therefore to investigate its accuracy.
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