ON MOUNTAINS AND MANKIND. 349 



I desire here to reallinu iiiy conviction that snow and ice in the 

 Wigh Alps are conservati\(' ai^ents; that tliey arrest the natural proc- 

 esses of suha^rial denudation; that the scourin<i- woi-k done by a gla- 

 cier is insi<;niHcant conii)ared with the hewin^^ and hackin<jf of frost 

 and iMinning 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 

 (ilacier had then recently retreated. The rocks, it is true, had had 

 tluMi- angles rubl)ed off by the glacier, but through their midst, (;ut 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, found at Rosenlaui, 

 at the Lower (Jrindelwald (Ilacier, at the Kirchet above ]Meiriugen, 

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

 It 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 make about glaciers. It has been stated 

 that glaciers go on melting in winter. Water, 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 Grindelwald Glacier. 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 

 Great Scheideck, which remains free when frost has fettered all its 

 neighbors. 



I should like to draw your attention before we leave glaciers to the 

 systematic efforts that are being nuule on the Continent to extend our 

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

 own, and two societies — one in P'rance, one in othei' countries — have 

 been constituted to promote and systenmtize furtiier investigations, 

 especially with regai'd to the secular and annual oscillations of the ice. 

 These were initiated by the English Alpine Clul) in 1893, while I was 

 its j:)resident. Subse({uenth% though tlie exertions of the late ]\Iar- 

 shall Hall, an enthusiast on the subject, an international connnission 

 of glaciers was founded, which has been presided over by Doctor 

 Kichter, M. Eorcl, and others; and more recently a Erench connnis- 

 sion, under M. Rabot, has been created with the 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. There has been, antl is, I rgret to say, very great diffi- 

 culty in obtaining anj^ methodical reports from the British posses- 

 sions oversea. The sul)ject does not connnend itself to the depart- 

 mental mind. Let us hope for ini])rovenient. I signalize the need 

 for it. Of course it is by no means always an easy matter to get the 



