2 STRUCTURE OBSERVED IN THE ICE OF GLACIERS. [1841. 



extent which such a communication, to be generally intelligible, 

 must necessarily have, and farther, that a large share of the 

 material must be drawn from the works and the observations 

 of others, when I recollected, besides, that, however earnest 

 and sustained had been my investigation of these curious points, 

 there was still much left obscure or unproved to my own mind ; 

 in short, that the communication I should lay before the Society 

 could not have that completeness, determination, and originality, 

 which could properly entitle it to a permanent place in the 

 Transactions of our Body, it seemed to me that the wish which 

 had been expressed by very many of those to whose judgment 

 I am most willing to defer, that I should make such a detailed 

 communication, was one with which, in my official position as 

 Secretary, and having in some degree the control of the order 

 and distribution of business, I could not properly comply. 



I do not, however, relinquish the idea of laying before the 

 Society, and even at considerable length, the conclusions which 

 I may ultimately form respecting the great physical and geo- 

 logical questions now at issue, and the facts and reasonings 

 upon which these conclusions are founded. The Glacier 

 Theory, whether it regards the present or past history of those 

 mighty and resistless vehicles of transport and instruments of 

 degradation, yields to no other physical speculation of the pre- 

 sent day in grandeur, importance, interest, and, I had almost 

 said, novelty. I look forward to the prospect, which I hope 

 may be realized, of extending much farther, during another 

 summer, my direct observations and experiments, and in the 

 meantime I desire to prepare myself for the task, by a thought- 

 ful review of the experience I have already had, and a close 

 anatysis of what has been already argued and written upon the 

 subject.* Should the result be successful, the Society may, a 

 year hence, expect the communication of it. For the present 

 I mean to confine myself to the description of a single fact, 



* [Such an analysis and review was published in the Edinburgh Beview for 

 April 1842, and was afterwards translated into French and published in the Annales 

 de Chimie.] 



