108 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



some knowledge as to their movements and laws, which will 

 throw much light upon the subject. 



But it is not necessary for us to go to Greenland or Swit- 

 zerland to study glacial action, for we have glaciers in our 

 own country. They are found in the northern part of Cali- 

 fornia ; we have them existing upon the sides of Mount 

 Shasta, which rises to the great altitude of 14,000 feet. We 

 also have them in Colorado ; and there we find one of the 

 most remarkable exhibitions of the erosive action of ice 

 which can be found upon our globe. According to the 

 report of the United States Surveying Expedition, under 

 Lieut. Davis, he discovered a vast channel in the side of 

 one of the Colorado mountains, which the ice had cut down 

 through solid rock. The walls upon either side are more 

 than one thousand feet deep, and they extend down nine 

 thousand feet into the valley below. 



It is, however, in Switzerland that ice movement has been 

 systematically and fully studied. Prior to 1827, there was 

 but very little known regarding the motions of glaciers. 

 During this year, observations were made in Switzerland 

 which proved conclusively that these masses of ice which 

 extend up from the valleys on to the mountains were in a 

 state of constant motion. If you start from the little town of 

 Meyringen and go up the Hassli Valley, following the Aar 

 River, you soon come to the Handeck Falls. At this point, 

 by turning to the right, you will reach a glacier which pos- 

 sesses very great interest. It is the one upon which the first 

 observations were made l)y any competent observer. Three 

 3^ears ago, I followed this route to reach the glacier. In 

 1827, a French savant visited this glacier, and erected upon 

 it a little hamlet, and resided there and made observations 

 continuing through several months ; and when he left it, it 

 was not visited again until 1^30. When Prof. Agassiz first 

 began his studies, he went up through this valley and reached 

 the glacier, in 1830. He found that, from 1827 to 1830, the 

 little hamlet had moved 327 feet down towards the valley. 

 Ten years later, in 1840, the same structure had moved 4,000 

 feet. This proved conclusively that glaciers moved, and 

 experiments were undertaken, by Agassiz and others, to 

 ascertain the rate of motion ; and the devices for obtaining 



