1 22 Charpentier's Essay on Glaciers. 



the waters penetrating by their fissures, must have commenced 

 immediately after the rising of the mountains. The torrents 

 formed before the commencement of the era of glaciers, must 

 have carried along much debris, which, after falling into, and 

 levelling the bottom of the valleys, discharged into the lakes, 

 that close up their entrance, all the materials not previously 

 deposited. The basins of these sheets of water were thus sen- 

 sibly contracted. 



The second phase was that of the formation of glaciers 

 and the transport of erratic blocks. This dispersion took 

 place at first in the highest valleys, then gradually in the low 

 regions of the Alps. When the glaciers had passed over the 

 lakes, the blocks of alpine rocks they transported arrived in 

 lower Switzerland, and there formed moraines, bands, and 

 glacial deposits ; those which remained on the back of the 

 glaciers produced, on the melting of the latter, scattered depo- 

 sits ; lastly, such as were carried along by torrents, formed new 

 beds of diluvium. These torrents produced by the melting of 

 the glaciers could not fail to be very considerable, and they 

 must have modified the relief of the plain, by mingling with 

 the debris already deposited, such as had been brought down 

 by the glaciers of the high Alps. They must have formed two 

 great rivers, one flowing into the basin of the Rhine, the other, 

 into that of the Rhone. At the moment of the general melt- 

 ing of glaciers, they must have been such as to carry blocks 

 of considerable size to great distances ; and it was perhaps at 

 this period that the blocks of alpine rocks, 3 feet in diameter, 

 observed by M. Elie de Beaumont, in the neighbourhood of 

 Lyons, were transported. Moraines could not be formed in the 

 portions of the sides of a glacier which formed a passage to 

 these rivers, for as soon as the blocks were detached, they 

 were carried away to some distance by the water ; and it is 

 this that explains why it happens between Gex and Geneva, 

 as between Soleure and Herzogenbuchsee, that at the two 

 lowest points which the diluvial glacier of the Rhone reaches, 

 the erratic formation, instead of terminating in a moraine, 

 passes into the state of diluvium. 



The melting of the diluvial glaciers forms the last phase 

 of the diluvial period. The blocks which were up to this 



