VI.—Considerations on the Flotation of Icebergs

• Published in: Geological Magazine
• Main Author: Milne, John
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1877
• Subjects: Geology; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0016756800148617; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0016756800148617

In all our text-books of Geology, the action of floating Ice is referred to as an agent of great power in producing physical changes. Its two chief forms are those of Coast Ice and Icebergs. Much has been written about the latter of these, but about the former very little. In the Geological Magazine, July, 1876, in an article on Ice and Ice-work in Newfoundland, I endeavoured to show that the greater agent of the two was Coast Ice, a view which has been subsequently strengthened by observations on the Coast of Finland. In this paper I had occasion to refer to the laxity with which the conditions under which Icebergs float have been spoken about. Thus, in Jukes and Geikie's Text-Book of Geology, p. 416, we are told that because “about eight times more ice of an iceberg is below water than above,” therefore “a mass which rises 300 feet above the waves has its bottom 2400 below them.”