Grand, however, as such floating fields of ice are, they are exceeded in magnificence by bergs. One of these, Scoresby relates, was one mile in circumference, fifteen hundred feet square, and a hundred feet above the level of the sea; so that, allowing for the inequalities of its surface, he considered its depth in the water seven hundred feet, its total thickness eight hundred feet, and its weight about forty-five millions of tons--an enormous mass, capable of transporting at least five millions of tons of extraneous weight. In number, too, they are as remarkable as in magnitude: above five hundred were counted by Scoresby from the mast-head at one time, of which scarcely one was less than the hull of a ship, about a hundred as high as the ship’s mast, and some twice that height, or two hundred feet above the surface of the sea; hence in total thickness about sixteen hundred feet. These, then, it must be admitted, are mighty engines fitted for the transport of rocks of colossal magnitude. But in the reasonings of sound philosophy, the apparent fitness of an object to perform some particular function cannot be deemed sufficient to establish the reality of its action: further proof is necessary, either derived from analogy or from positive facts. In respect to ice-fields, the easiest of observation, it is remarkable that neither of the Captains Scoresby speaks of having noticed extraneous matter upon them, unless the expression “heaps of rubbish,” in a passage of the voyage of Scoresby senior, means rubbish of stones as well as rubbish of ice. Examples will indeed be quoted from other writers, but the comparative scarcity of transported matter on the upper surface of the fields of ice, seems a natural consequence of their mode and place of formation. Formed in bays or gulfs, some portions of them are broken off by the violence of the waves at a distance from the shore, and never therefore come in contact with rocks or stones; whilst others, grounding in shallow water, encase many in the substance of their lower surface, although none are seen on the upper.