1841.] RIBBONED APPEARANCE OF THE GLACIER OF THE AAR. 3 



which appears generally, if not universally, to have escaped the 

 notice of former travellers amongst the Glaciers. 



On the 9th of August last (1841) I paid my first visit to 

 the Lower Glacier of the Aar, upon or near which I spent the 

 greater part of three weeks in company with Professor Agassiz 

 of Neufcliatel, and Mr. J. M. Heath of Cambridge. It is 

 surprising how little we see until we are taught to observe. I 

 had crossed and recrossed many glaciers before, and attended 

 to their phenomena in a general way ; but it was with a new 

 sense of the importance and difficulty of the investigation of 

 their nature and functions that I found something to remark at 

 every step which had not struck me before ; and even in the 

 course of the walk along our own glacier (as we considered that 

 of the Aar, when we had taken up our habitation upon it), we 

 found on its vast and varied surface something each day which 

 had totally escaped us before. It was fully three hours' good 

 walking on the ice or moraine from the lower extremity of the 

 glacier to the huge block of stone, under whose friendly shelter 

 we were to encamp ; and in the course of this walk (a distance 

 of eight or nine miles, on a moderate computation, allowing for 

 the roughness of the way) on the first day, I noticed in some 

 parts of the ice, an appearance which I cannot more accurately 

 describe, than by calling it a ribboned structure, formed by thin 

 and delicate blue and bluish-white bands or strata, which 

 appeared to traverse the ice in a vertical direction, or rather 

 which, by their apposition, formed the entire mass of the ice. 

 The direction of these bands was parallel to the length of the 

 glacier, and, of course, being vertical, they cropped out at the 

 surface, and wherever that surface was intersected and smoothed 

 by superficial water-courses, their structure appeared with the 

 beauty and sharpness of a delicately-veined chalcedony. I was 

 surprised, on remarking it to Mr. Agassiz as a thing which 

 must be familiar to him, to find that he had not distinctly 

 noticed it before, at least if he had, that he had considered it 

 as a superficial phenomenon, wholly unconnected with the 

 general structure of the ice. But we had not completed our 



