NATURE IN MOTION. 33 



nearly a thousand feet annually. Thus, stones travel .on 

 the back of icy waves from the mountain top to the foot 

 of the Alps, where they form grotesque groups and lofty 

 ramparts, or lie scattered about on the plain, like the 

 giant rocks of Stonehenge. 



They have, however, one mode of travel unlike all 

 other kinds of locomotion, and so mysterious that human 

 science has not yet fathomed its nature. Large masses 

 of rock, namely, of truly gigantic dimensions, when by 

 accident they fall into the deep crevices of these glaciers, 

 return with quiet but irresistible energy to the surface, 

 moving slowly steadily upward. Thus, not unfrequently 

 vast pyramids or stately pillars of ice, broken loose from 

 the mother glacier, are seen standing in isolated grandeur, 

 and crowned with huge masses of stone. After a while 

 the strange forms change and melt, the rock sinks deeper 

 and deeper, until at last it is lost to sight, deeply buried 

 in snow and ice. Yet, after a time, it reappears above, 

 and the Swiss say, the glacier purifies itself. For, strange 

 as it seems, the glacier does not suffer either block or 

 grain of sand within its clear, transparent masses, and 

 though covered for miles with millions of crumbling 

 stones, with heaps of foliage and debris of every kind 

 at the foot of the mountain it is so clear and pure, 

 that even the microscope fails to discern the presence of 

 foreign bodies in its limpid waters. What is equally 

 amazing is, that whilst all weighty objects, leaves, insects, 

 dead bodies, stones, or gravel, sink alike into the cold 

 bed, the organic parts decay quickly in the frozen, rigid 



mass, but the inorganic parts are thrown up again. Years 

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