Price.] ^Oi) [March 3, 17, <& 



Alps has been lowered by causes that have never for one moment ceased ; 

 and j'et more rapidly have the glaciers, which never ceased to flow, worn 

 more deeply their channels. The strite made l)y the ice on the sides of Monte 

 Rosa and the Bernese Alps show that tlie i^laciers moved at higher elevations 

 relatively to the scored rocks, and adiiering to the causes named, we must 

 conclude that the mountains were higher and broader to increase the sup- 

 ply of snow, and tliat the glaciers moved upon a higher plane, whereby 

 they scored higher tracings on the rocks, and projected further into the val- 

 leys below, and carried their boulders to a greater distance. These are 

 causes sufficing for the visible etfects, wlien we add to them to the trans- 

 porting power of ice-bearing floods, carrying down land slides, and ice- 

 covered lakes, which burst the dams that had sustained them. We need 

 not go to the north pole or the planets to explain the phenomena of the 

 Alps ; except as icebergs floating down from the north would bring an arc- 

 tic cold with them. 



Lyell says "the Alps have acquired four thousand, and even in some 

 places more than ten thousand feet of their present altitude since tlie com- 

 mencement of the Eocene period. " 1 Prin. 256. He speaks of what they re- 

 tain ; but what height they had at their greatest exaltation no one can tell, 

 for upheaving elevation and disintegrating degradation are generally simul- 

 taneous i)roceedings ; but from facts observed it seems more reasonable to 

 infer that great glaciations were mainly local, except as arctic currents came 

 down upon Central Europe freighted with ice. 



Dr. Hector's statements lately made before the Geological Society in 

 London, have a bearing upon several points of this discourse. The South 

 Island of New Zealand has its Soutliern Alps of which Mount Cook, four- 

 teen thousand feet high, is the highest, with a snow-field of one hundred 

 and sixty square miles, in south latitude, nearly 44°. Judging by the 

 moraine matter, snow formerly was vastly more abundant. He "demon- 

 strated the excessive action of glaciers in cutting back cols; an action more 

 energetic formerly; some of the cols having been worn down as low as 

 eighteen hundred feet." "The reas(m for this contraction of the ice area is 

 the great question for determination. Was it due to difference of climate, 

 the result of a great glacial period V The remains of a past fauna aflbrd 

 no evidence of this. We may, indeed, suppose that the whole fauna 

 migrated to the north; but we must, in that case inrent the land and bring 

 into play oscillations more extensive than those required for anotlier alterna- 

 tive, viz: — the alterati(m (if level, within the area itself. We might suppose 

 a general alteration of level, even to the extent of four t!\ousand feet higher 

 than the present, ])ut the evidence aflbrdcnl by the shore line is unfavorable 

 to this view. There remains the theory of ii,7ierjual elevation, Avhicli com- 

 bined with a most enormous destruction, the resultof ages of glacier action, 

 best explains the phenomenon." "In conclusion, the author stated his 

 belief that there has been no general ciiange of climate, but many changes 

 o{ rehitiee leeel, resulting in a great destruction of surface, which had taken 

 place in groups of peaks at different times." Nature, January 3Tlh 1870, p- 



