ON THE FORMATION OF LAKES. 54; 



we advanced that the rocks became more and more worn and 

 rounded ; that in sheltered places, along the sides of the valley, beds 

 of thick plastic clay were to be found; and also that the whole valley 

 was strewed with smoothed and rounded pebbles, together with huge 

 bowlders, many of which were a hundred tons in weight. These 

 were often planed off and grooved, precisely like many of the trans- 

 ported stones that are scattered so plentifully over the hills and val- 

 leys of the State of New York ; and like them, too, frequently differed 

 in the nature of their material from the rocks of the surrounding cliffs. 

 As we ascended the valley, these peculiarities became more and more 

 strongly marked ; while around us the hills and knolls had a rounded 

 and flowing outline, and formed what are known as roches mouton- 

 nees, the mountain-peaks that towered above were sharp and angu- 

 lar, and stood out against the clear sky like cathedral-spires. 



All these facts have such a marked and intimate connection with 

 the glaciers that still linger on the mountain-side, that no one who 

 had traversed those valleys, or traced the streams up to the ice-caves, 

 from which many of them spring, turbid and overloaded with silt, at 

 the foot of the glaciers could doubt that these valleys, with all their 

 peculiar features, owe their existence to the great extension of the 

 glaciers, which in past time flowed from the mountains in great rivers 

 of ice, and carved out those grand valleys to a depth of many thou- 

 sands of feet in the solid rock. As these ancient glaciers retreated 

 and melted away, they left the indisputable records of their presence 

 throughout the valley. 



The same connection of rounded and striated bowlders (called 

 Fiincllinge wandering children by the German peasants) with ex- 

 isting glaciers has been observed by Agassiz and others in the Alps 

 of Switzerland. Not only these facts, but the manner in which the 

 glaciers flow down the valleys like great rivers of ice, has been close- 

 ly observed and measured ; they have been seen time and again trans- 

 porting immense amounts of dirt and stones on their surface, which in 

 time formed part of the terminal moraines at their extremity. The 

 sides and bottoms of the valleys through which they flow are smoothed 

 and covered with scratches made by the pebbles and stones set in the 

 bottom and sides of the glacier, which in their turn were rounded and 

 scratched, often in various directions, caused by their breaking from 

 their matrix, and being reset in a new position. 



If we were to place the rounded and scratched stones from the 

 drift ("hard-pan," " hog's-backs," etc.) of NewYork beside the similar 

 stones broken from their icy fastenings in the bottom of the glacier 

 of Zermatt, we should find them so similar in their markings that no 

 eye could distinguish but that they had made the journey under the 

 glacier side by side. 



If we compare the smoothed and sti*iated rocks from the bottoms 

 and shores of Lake Erie, Cayuga Lake, or almost any of our lakes 



