Note 125 — Chapter XVII

Such a change of temperature, without any depression or elevation of the mountains, has been thought by Capt. R. Strachey (“Journal of Geological Society”), an able Himalayan observer, to be the necessary consequence of an ocean at the foot of these mountains; for the amount of perpetual snow, and consequent descent of the glaciers, increasing indirectly in proportion to the humidity of the climate, and the snow-fall, he conjectured that the proximity of the ocean would prodigiously increase such a deposition of snow.—To me, this argument appears inconclusive; for the first effect of such a vast body of water would be to raise the temperature of winter; and as it is the rain, rather than the sun of summer, which removes the Sikkim snow, so would an increase of this rain elevate, rather than depress, the level of perpetual snow.