348 Professor Forbes' Account of his recent 



lies of the Alps, which do not descend into the hollows, but 

 festoon the steep sides of snowy mountains. They are, I be- 

 lieve, what Saussure called glaciers of the second order, and 

 have no relation to ncvcs^ so far as I can attach a meaning to 

 that term. They are of hard ice, and almost invariably pre- 

 sent an appearance of stratification parallel to the soil on 

 which they rest. This stratification is only apparent ; the 

 cleavage planes dip forwards and outwards, instead of dipping 

 inwards, as in the terminal portion of glaciers of less inclina- 

 tion. The surfaces of crystallization have, in this case, abso- 

 lutely the form of a scallop-shell, the lip or front being always 

 inclined below the horizon. I attach importance to the com- 

 munity of feature in glaciers of every form and inclination, be- 

 cause it indicates that the origin of the structure cannot be 

 unimportant, considering its generality ; and in this particular 

 case of small steep glaciers, it appears, I think, that M. de 

 Charpentier, who has justly denied the stratification of gla- 

 ciers in general, has wrongly admitted the existence of strata 

 in the case in question, which he regards as formed by the in- 

 tercalation of mud from the soil in some manner, which, if I 

 recollect rightly, he does not very clearly describe. Now, 

 these seeming strata of mud T have examined in a multitude of 

 cases, and found invariably to result merel}^ from the percola- 

 tion of dirt from the moraine, sometimes even accompanied by 

 small fragments of rock, into the more spongy and less crys- 

 talline veins of the glacier mass which already existed : and 

 the proof is, that, by cutting w'ith a hatchet, we gradually 

 gain the pure ice, equally veined with the exterior, but not 

 discoloured. I may observe, in passing, that the fissures 

 which, in the lower part and near the sides of glaciers, form 

 the granules, about which so much has been written, are stop- 

 ped by the independent formation of the veins in the ice, which 

 thus dr^monstrate their prior origin .'I 



One afternoon I happened to ascend higher than usual 

 above the level of the Mer de Glace, and was struck by tl.e 

 appearance of discoloured bands traversing its surface nearly 

 in the form indicated in fig. 4. These shades, too indistinct to 1 e 

 noticed when near or upon the surface, except upon very care- 

 ful inspection, are very striking and beautiful when ^een at a 



