Show ABOUT ICEBERGS correction of wrong impressions about the white mountains of the ocean the only two varieties that are worthy of consideration owing to their importance are icebergs and ica floes says home and country the icebergs are originally simple in form just huge hunks of ice they are entitled to the name of berg or mountain only because they appear as such when floating on the flat surface of the open sea when seen close to alie mountainous rock bund coast of greenland close to where they have been thrown off by the glaciers they look remarkably small and insignificant roughly speaking they are about as large as a house and vary in size about as much as houses do to be more accurate few are over one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in height and icebergs reaching a height of three hundred feet are exceptions the bergs of northern seas are not so broad and long as these of the antarctic ocean the latter not infrequently cov arning a surface of over a square mile the former therefore look like huge blocks rather than the huge fragments of ice plateaus of the southern polar acas furthermore Futher more the southern ico bergs appear to be composed of two or more or layers of ice and arc far clearer than their northern sisters on account of their freedom from foreign matter and the purity of the ice which composes them these distinctive features are not so prominent in the old bergs which have been partly melted and broken away by the water the porous glacial ice of the bergs is about one seventh lighter than seawater and only one seventh of its bulk juts above the surface of the water it must not be imagined however that an iceberg one hundred feet high reaches six hundred feet below the sur face this would be the case if tha berg were an exact geometrical figure which it is not it is one seventh of its bulk that appears above the surface and not of its height the part under the water the remaining six sevenths may be made up in eidth and breadth rather than depth as indeed is generally alie case |