Alfred Wallace - Island Life; Or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras

Perpetual Snow Nowhere Exists on Lowland Areas. —It is a very remarkable and most suggestive fact, that nowhere in the world at the present time are there any extensive lowlands covered with perpetual snow. The Tundras of Siberia and the barren grounds of N. America are all clothed with some kind of summer vegetation; 47and it is only where there are lofty mountains or plateaus—as in Greenland, Spitzbergen, and Grinnell's Land—that glaciers, accompanied by perpetual snow, cover the country, and descend in places to the level of the sea. In the Antarctic regions there are extensive highlands and lofty mountains, and these are everywhere exposed to the influence of moist sea-air; and it is here, accordingly, that we find the nearest approach to a true ice-cap covering the whole circumference of the Antarctic continent, and forming a girdle of ice-cliffs which almost everywhere descend to the sea. Such Antarctic islands as South Georgia, South Shetland, and Heard Island, are often said to have perpetual snow at sea-level; but they are all very mountainous, and send down glaciers into the sea, and as they are exposed to moist sea-air on every side, the precipitation, almost all of which takes the form of snow even in summer, is of course unusually large. 48

That high land in an area of great precipitation is the necessary condition of glaciation, is well shown by the general state of the two polar areas at the present time. The northern part of the north temperate zone is almost all land, mostly low but with elevated borders; while the polar area is, with the exception of Greenland and a few other considerable islands, almost all water. In the southern hemisphere the temperate zone is almost all water, while the polar area is almost all land, or is at least inclosed by a ring of high and mountainous land. The result is that in the north the polar area is free from any accumulation of permanent ice (except on the highlands of Greenland and Grinnell's Land), while in the south a complete barrier of ice of enormous thickness appears to surround the pole. Dr. Croll shows, from the measured height of numerous Antarctic icebergs (often miles in length) that the ice-sheet from which they are the broken outer fragments must be from a mile to a mile and a half in thickness. 49As this is the thickness of the outer edge of the ice it must be far thicker inland; and we thus find that the Antarctic continent is at this very time suffering glaciation to quite as great an extent as we have reason to believe occurred in the same latitudes of the northern hemisphere during the last glacial epoch.

The accompanying diagrams show the comparative state of the two polar areas both as regards the distribution of land and sea, and the extent of the ice-sheet and floating icebergs. The much greater quantity of ice at the south pole is undoubtedly due to the presence of a large extent of high land, which acts as a condenser, and an unbroken surrounding ocean, which affords a constant supply of vapour; and the effect is intensified by winter being there in aphelion , and thus several days longer than with us, while the whole southern hemisphere is at that time farther from the sun, and therefore receives less heat.

We see, however, that with less favourable conditions for the production and accumulation of ice, Greenland is glaciated down to Lat. 61°. What, then, would be the effect if the Antarctic continent, instead of being confined almost wholly within the south polar circle, were to extend in one or two great mountainous promontories far into the temperate zone? The comparatively small Heard Island in S. Lat. 53° is even now glaciated down to the sea. What would be its condition were it a northerly extension of a lofty Antarctic continent? We may be quite sure that glaciation would then be far more severe, and that an ice-sheet corresponding to that of Greenland might extend to beyond the parallel of 50° S. Lat. Even this is probably much too low an estimate, for on the west coast of New Zealand in S. Lat. 43° 35′ a glacier even now descends to within 705 feet of the sea-level; and if those islands were the northern extension of an Antarctic continent, we may be pretty sure that they would be nearly in the ice-covered condition of Greenland, although situated in the latitude of Marseilles.

Diagram of the approximate extent of Permanent and Floating Ice around the North and the South Poles. (After Petermann.)

Conditions Determining the Presence or Absence of Perpetual Snow. —It is clear, then, that the vicinity of a sea or ocean to supply moisture, together with high land to serve as a condenser of that moisture into snow, are the prime essentials of a great accumulation of ice; and it is fully in accordance with this view that we find the most undoubted signs of extensive glaciation in the west of Europe and the east of North America, both washed by the Atlantic and both having abundance of high land to condense the moisture which it supplies. Without these conditions cold alone, however great, can produce no glacial epoch. This is strikingly shown by the fact, that in the very coldest portions of the two northern continents—Eastern Siberia and the north-western shores of Hudson's Bay—there is no perennial covering of snow or ice whatever. No less remarkable is the coincidence of the districts of greatest glaciation with those of greatest rainfall at the present time. Looking at a rain-map of the British Isles, we see that the greatest area of excessive rainfall is the Highlands of Scotland, then follows the west of Ireland, Wales, and the north of England; and these were glaciated pretty nearly in proportion to the area of country over which there is an abundant supply of moisture. So in Europe, the Alps and the Scandinavian mountains have excessive rainfall, and have been areas of excessive glaciation, while the Ural and Caucasian mountains, with less rain, never seem to have been proportionally glaciated. In North America the eastern coast has an abundant rainfall, and New England with North-eastern Canada seems to have been the source of much of the glaciation of that continent. 50

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A small number of species belonging to the West Indies are found in the extreme southern portion of the Florida Peninsula.

I cannot avoid here referring to the enormous waste of labour and money with comparatively scanty and unimportant results to natural history of most of the great scientific voyages of the various civilized governments during the present century. All these expeditions combined have done far less than private collectors in making known the products of remote lands and islands. They have brought home fragmentary collections, made in widely scattered localities, and these have been usually described in huge folios or quartos, whose value is often in inverse proportion to their bulk and cost. The same species have been collected again and again, often described several times over under new names, and not unfrequently stated to be from places they never inhabited. The result of this wretched system is that the productions of some of the most frequently visited and most interesting islands on the globe are still very imperfectly known, while their native plants and animals are being yearly exterminated, and this is the case even with countries under the rule or protection of European governments. Such are the Sandwich Islands, Tahiti, the Marquesas, the Philippine Islands, and a host of smaller ones; while Bourbon and Mauritius, St. Helena, and several others, have only been adequately explored after an important portion of their productions has been destroyed by cultivation or the reckless introduction of goats and pigs. The employment in each of our possessions, and those of other European powers, of a resident naturalist at a very small annual expense, would have done more for the advancement of knowledge in this direction than all the expensive expeditions that have again and again circumnavigated the globe.