ON MOUNTAINS AND MANKIND. 349 



I desire here to reaffirm my eoiivirtion that snow and ice in the 

 High Alps are conseiTative agents; that tliey arrest the natural proc- 

 esses of subterial denudation; that the scouring work done by a gla- 

 cier is insignificant compared with the hewing and hacking of frost 

 and running water on slopes exposed to the open sky without a roof 

 of neve and glacier. 



The contrast between the work of these two agents was forced upon 

 me many years ago while looking at the ground from which the Eiger 

 Glacier had then recently retreated. The rocks, it is true, had had 

 their angles rul)bed off by the glacier, but through their midst, cut as 

 by a knife, was the deep slit or gash made by the subglacial torrent. 

 There is in the Alps a particular type of gorge, foinid at Rosenlaui, 

 at the Lower (Irindelwald Glacier, at the Kirchet above Meiriugen, 

 and also in the Caucasus, within the curves of old terminal moraines. 

 Tt is obviously due to the action of the subglacial torrent, which cuts 

 deeper and deeper while the ice above protects the sides of the cut- 

 ting from the effects of the atmosphere. 



One more note I have to nudce about glaciers. It has been stated 

 that glaciers go on melting in winter. AA^iter, no doubt, flows from 

 under some of them, but that is not the same thing. The end of the 

 Rosenlaui Glacier is dry in January; you can jump across the clear 

 streams that flow from the Lower (Jrindelwald (irlacier. That stream 

 is not meltings, but the issue of a spring which rises under the glacier 

 and does not freeze. There is another such stream on the way to the 

 (xreat Scheideck, which remains free when frost has fettered all its 

 neighbors. 



I shoukl like to di-aw your attention Ix'fore we leave glaciers to the 

 systematic efforts that are being made on the Gontinent to extend our 

 knowledge of their peculiarities. The subject has a literature of its 

 own, and two societies — one in France, one in other countries — have 

 been constituted to jn-omote and systematize further investigations, 

 especially with regard to the secular and annual oscillations of the ice. 

 These were initiated by the English Alpine Clu1> in 18!):'), while I was 

 its president. Subsequently, though the exertions of the late Mar- 

 shall Hall, a.n enthusiast on the subject, an international commission 

 of glaciers was founded, which lias been pi-esided over by Doctor 

 Richter, M. Eorel, and others; and more recently a French conunis- 

 sion, under M. Rabot, has been cicated with tlie object of studying 

 in detail the glaciers of the French Alps. A number of excellent 

 reports have been published, embodying information from all parts 

 of the globe. Tliere has been, and is, I rgret to say, very great diffi- 

 culty in obtaining an}^ methodical reports from the British posses- 

 sions oversea. The subject does not connnend itself to the depart- 

 mental mind. Let us hope foi- improvement. I signalize tlie need 

 for it. Of course it is bv no means always an easv matter to iret the 



