changed the Surface of Switzerland. 35 



We may add, that the greatest glacier which came from the 

 Alps, is that which issued out by the Valley of the Rhone ; 

 for it pushed its moraines not only so far as the ridge of 

 the Jura, but on the western side to Geneva, and on the east- 

 ern to the environs of Burgdorf, in the canton of Berne. If 

 no other glacier in Switzerland equalled in extent that of the 

 Valley of the Rhone, it is because this valley is the longest in 

 Switzerland, and also especially owing to its situation between 

 the two high chains of the Alps, as well as to the circumstance 

 that, from its origin at the Furca, to where it meets the Lake 

 of Geneva, almost all the valleys which join it come from very 

 high mountains, covered even in the present time with perpe- 

 tual ice and snow. 



Such are the conjectures, authorized by geological facts, on 

 the revolutions which have successively changed the surface of 

 the canton of Vaud. We shall finish this expose, by endeavour- 

 ing to determine the height to which this country and the Alps 

 were raised by the appearance of the granite, and to calculate 

 the sinking which followed this great catastrophe. 



Before the last soulevement of the Alps, the country of the 

 basin of the Rhone, in order to produce the chamaerops, must 

 have had a mean temperature of 175 Cent, or 64 Fahr. The 

 temperature of the valleys of the Alps, which is fit, not for the 

 formation, but for the preservation of glaciers, is 6 Cent, or 

 4$8 Fahr Such is the temperature of the Valley of Cha- 

 mouny. If we admit that the temperature decreases 1 for 

 every 480 feet (of the canton Vaud) of elevation, the country 

 which enjoyed a mean temperature of 175 C. or 64 F., must 

 have been raised 5520 feet (480 + (17.5 6) ), in order that 

 its mean temperature should be lowered to 6 C. or 428 F. 

 But, as the elevation of our lake is 1116 feet, the sinking which 



Miltlmlungen aus dem Gebiete der theoretischen Erdkunde, by Frobel and Heer, I 

 have endeavoured to develope the theory of M. Venetz,* and to bring it into 

 accordance with the facts which prove the ancient elevation of temperature, 

 and to apply it to several phenomena of the external configuration of valleys 

 and mountains. 



* The Theory of M. Venetz, that the Boulders of Switzerland are the Moraines and remains of 

 ancient glaciers, has been recently defended and developed by M. de Charpentler, in a special me- 

 moir, inserted in the Annale* des Mine*, vol. 6, Paris, 1636. (Note by the Editor of the Btorto- 

 tMque Universelle de Geneve.) This article was published in our last Numbw, p. 210.-E. Nw 

 Thil. Jottrn. 



