ALPINE SCULPTURE 263 



100 hours the maximum motion of the three lines respeo- 

 lively is as follows: 



Maximum Motion in 100 hours 



Line A 56 inches 



*• B 45 ** 



" C 30 " 



This deportment explains an appearance which must 

 strike every observer who looks upon the Morteratsch from 

 the Piz Languard, or from the new Bernina Eoad. A me- 

 dial moraine runs along the glacier, commencing as a nar- 

 row streak, but toward the end the moraine extending in 

 width, until finally it quite covers the terminal portion of 

 the glacier. The cause of this is revealed by the foregoing 

 measurements, which prove that a stone on the moraine 

 where it is crossed by the line A approaches a second stone 

 on the moraine where it is crossed by the line C with a 

 velocity of twenty-six inches per one hundred hours. The 

 moraine is in a state of longitudinal compression. Its ma- 

 terials are more and more squeezed together, and they must 

 consequently move laterally and render the moraine at the 

 terminal portion of the glacier wider than above. 



The motion of the Morteratsch glacier, then, diminishes 

 as we descend. The maximum motion of the third line is 

 thirty inches in one hundred hours, or seven inches a day 

 — a very slow motion ; and had we run a line nearer to the 

 end of the glacier, the motion would have been slower still. 

 At the end itself it is nearly insensible.* Now, I submit that 

 this is not the place to seek for the scooping power of a 



* The snout of the Aletsch glacier has a diuraal motion of Jess than two 

 inches, while a mile or so above the snout the velocity is eighteen inches. The 

 spreading out of the moraine is here very striking. 



