328 Prof. Struder on Bowlders. 
oni 
that of Chamouni. This theory rests principally, if not exclusively, 
on observations made in the vallies of Valais, Savoy, and Vaud. 
The appearances in the Aar-valley are less favorable to it. We 
see around Berne not only the declivities on both sides of the 
valley but the valley-bottom itself covered with blocks, and these 
are not in any respect, as we have just seen, accordant with glacier 
ramparts. Moreover, on the plateau of Langenberg and Belp- 
berg, elevated nigh a thousand feet above Berne, bowlder almost 
strings itself to bowlder ; the whole surface of these hills, which 
ie in the midst of the Aar-valley, is thickly strewn with blocks, 
and although here and there we may suppose ourselves to have 
observed a linear accumulation like the Swedish osar,* yet is 
the direction of these ramparts usually parallel with the direction 
of the valley; they appear to be the remnants of an earlier de- 
trital coating mostly carried away by later streams, and not mo- 
raines.t Moreover, in the upper Aar-valley, in the region of 
Meiringen, exist facts, which if not in direct opposition, are yet 
not in the desired coincidence with the glacier theory. ere, 
too, we see no old moraine. The blocks occur at very different 
heights ; they have been transported high over the Brunig, indeed 
more than two thousand feet high over. the Aar-valley; we find 
them in multitudes at_the Scheideck-pass and at Zaun perhaps 4 
thousand feet above the valley-bottom ; then again at Riiti above 
Meiringen, which may be situated some hundred feet lower than 
Zaun; finally, almost in the valley-bottom itself, by Willigen, 
and on the Kirchet, and lower in the valley by Brienzwiler, Bri- 
enz, Oberried, &c. But the glacier theory seems to me t0 
"pressed with the most weighty objections on the side of physics- 
Supposing the present quantity of snow on the surface of Swit- 
zerland to have remained unchanged, while the requisite refrige- 
ration is derived from an alteration of the earth’s axis or any 
other source, still the question at once arises whether in fact all 
the vallies would fill with ice and then this flow together towards 
Switzerland in one enormous, almost horizontal glacier ? Lea¥> 
ing too unsettled, the mode in which the as yet enigmatical 
movement of the glaciers is effected, granting the hitherto gene 
: Oasar, elongated hills. Purtties, Geol. p. 208. In Swedish as is4 chain of 
hills, and asar is the plural form and is more properly written osar.—TR. — 
t Moraine, the rubbish brought down by glaciers and left after the ice has 
melted.—Tr. 
