ICE AND GLACIERS 



A LECTURE DELIVERED AT FRANKFORT-ON- 



THE-MAIN, AND AT HEIDELBERG, IN 



FEBRUARY, 1865. 



THE world of ice and of eternal snow, as unfolded to 

 us on the summits of the neighbouring Alpine chain, 

 so stern, so solitary, so dangerous, it may be, has yet 

 its own peculiar charm. Not only does it enchain the atten- 

 tion of the natural philosopher, who finds in it the most 

 wonderful disclosures as to the present and past history of 

 the globe, but every summer it entices thousands of travellers 

 of all conditions, who find there mental and bodily recrea- 

 tion. While some content themselves with admiring from 

 afar the dazzling adornment which the pure, luminous 

 masses of snowy peaks, interposed between the deeper blue 

 of the sky and the succulent green of the meadows, lend to 

 the landscape, others more boldly penetrate into the strange 

 world, willingly subjecting themselves to the most extreme 

 degrees of exertion and danger, if only they may fill them- 

 selves with the aspect of its sublimity. 



I will not attempt what has so often been attempted in 

 vain to depict in words the beauty and magnificence of 

 nature, whose aspect delights the Alpine traveller. I may 

 well presume that it is known to most of you from your own 

 observation ; or, it is to be hoped, will be so. But I imagine 

 that the delight and interest in the magnificence of those 

 scenes will make you the more inclined to lend a willing ear 

 to the remarkable results of modern investigations on the 

 more prominent phenomena of the glacial world. There 

 we see that minute peculiarities of ice, the mere mention 

 of which might at other times be regarded as a scientific 

 subtlety, are the causes of the most important changes in 

 glaciers; shapeless masses of rock begin to relate their his- 



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