XIX. Some remarks appended to a report on Mr. Hopkin's paper 'On the theory of the motion of glaciers'

A few remarks arising out of the perusal of this paper may perhaps not be considered as out of place on the present occasion. They are not meant as in any way impugning the author’s views of the laws determining the fracture and disruption of glacier masses, or their application to glacier-phenomena in general, but in relation to the somewhat mysterious process of regelation itself, and to those generally recognized and most remarkable facts of the gradual conversion of snow into more or less transparent ice, and the reunion of blocks and fissured or broken fragments, under the joint influence of renewed pressure and of that process (whatever its nature), into continuous masses. If regelation be really a process of crystallization, it seems exceedingly difficult to imagine how the molecules forming the cementing layer between two juxtaposed surfaces can at once arrange themselves conformably to the accidentally differing axial arrangements of those of the two surfaces cemented.