VIII. 



On the Work of Glaciers/ 



AN invitation from the Editor of Natural Science to write a short 

 critical review of Professor Bonney's article on Glaciers in the 

 current number of the Geographical Journal, is as refreshing as a whiff 

 of cool, pure air from the " Gletcherwelt " in these sultry June days. 

 To be brief in the present instance is not difficult, since I have 

 nothing of importance to add to what I have already put into print, 

 while I have nothing, on the other hand, to unsay. One has not 

 time in these days to go on repeating, ad nauseam, the same arguments. 

 All that my friend Dr. Blanford has urged now has been met and 

 answered, as I venture to think, by anticipation in my papers, and in 

 the criticisms which I have published of the writings of others during 

 the last ten years, that is to say, since my papers (i) "On the 

 Mechanics of Glaciers," (2) "On the Origin of Valley Lakes," were 

 published side by side in the February number of the Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geological Society in 1883. On the other hand, after reading the 

 article of Professor Bonney's, which I have been asked to notice, I 

 can only find one criticism to offer, and that is that he does not make 

 enough of the physical impossibility of the work of excavation being 

 done by ice, or of local earth movements, which must occur as details 

 of the " warping " of the crust, in districts such as must be subjected 

 to considerable squeezing between two great stable masses of the 

 Archaean crust, as these undergo circumferential approximation, 

 towards one another by secular contraction. All that has been 

 written in more recent years by Professor Spencer (and others) on the 

 negative results observed by him under some of the great Norwegian 

 glaciers, and the positive results obtained by himself and his colleagues 

 as to the recent changes of level in the region of the great lakes of 

 North America, co-operating with the damming-up of old Eocene 

 lines of drainage by glacial detritus during the Quaternary period,, 

 goes to confirm the suggestion (inter alia) that I threw out ten years 



1 " Do Glaciers Excavate ? " By Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc, F.R.S. With 

 observations by Dr. W. T. Blanford, Mr. Douglas Freshfield, Sir Henry H. 

 Howorth, and Mr. W. M. Conway. Geographical Journal, vol. i., pp. 481-504 (June,. 

 1893) 



