1857-1858 CANADA AND SWITZERLAND 253 



The chief geological fruits of this expedition were 

 given partly in a discourse to the Royal Institution, 

 but more fully in a paper read before the Geological 

 Society. Ramsay had not yet realised the massiveness 

 of the land-ice of the Glacial Period. Like most of the 

 geologists of the day, he still regarded the 'drift' as 

 the result of transport by icebergs, and to the same 

 agency he attributed the striae on the sides and summits 

 of the hills. He recognised the remarkably ice- worn 

 character of Canadian topography, but he did not 

 yet associate that character with a former extensive 

 glaciation by land-ice. Nevertheless he now beheld 

 the effects of this glaciation on a far grander scale 

 than he had ever before seen them, and unconsciously 

 he was accumulating material that would enable him 

 to get rid of the paralysing idea that the land must 

 have been submerged beneath the ocean as far as the 

 highest striations or drift deposits could be traced. 

 He was not, however, able entirely to divest himself 

 of the old error until the summer of 1861. 



In the summer of 1858 Ramsay and Tyndall made 

 an expedition together into Switzerland for the purpose 

 of studying the phenomena of glaciers and ice-action. 

 The results of their conjoint observations on this 

 occasion are to be found in the writings of each 

 explorer. Tyndall had not specially examined the 

 proofs of the former greater extension of the glaciers 

 of the Alps, and Ramsay, to whom this was a matter 

 of supreme interest in connection with his inves- 

 tigations in Britain, took pains to direct his com- 

 panion's attention to the subject during the course 

 of the excursion. Arriving at Grindelwald, they 

 undertook some preliminary climbing among the ice- 

 filled valleys of that district, and Ramsay proved 



