1842.] GLACIERS OF SECOND ORDER DIRT-BANDS. 21 



the steep sides of snowy mountains. They are, I believe, what 

 Saussure called glaciers of the second order, and have no relation 

 to neves, so far as I can attach a meaning to that term. They 

 are of hard ice, and almost invariably present an appearance of 

 stratification parallel to the soil on which they rest. This 

 stratification is only apparent ; the cleavage planes dip forwards 

 and outwards, instead of dipping inwards, as in the terminal 

 portion of glaciers of less inclination. The surfaces of crystal- 

 lization have, in this case, absolutely the form of a scallop- 

 shell, the lip or front being always inclined below the horizon. 

 I attach importance to the community of feature in glaciers of 

 every form and inclination, because it indicates that the origin 

 of the structure cannot be unimportant, considering its gene- 

 rality ; and in this particular case of small steep glaciers, it 

 appears, I think, that M. de Charpentier, who has justly denied 

 the stratification of glaciers in general, has wrongly admitted 

 the existence of strata in the case in question, which he regards 

 as formed by the intercalation of mud from the soil in some 

 manner, which, if I recollect rightly, he does not very clearly 

 describe. Now, these seeming strata of mud I have examined 

 in a multitude of cases, and found invariably to result merely 

 from the percolation of dirt from the moraine, sometimes even 

 accompanied by small fragments of rock, into the more spongy 

 arid less crystalline veins of the glacier mass which already 

 existed ; and the proof is that, by cutting with a hatchet, we 

 gradually gain the pure ice, equally veined with the exterior, 

 but not discoloured. I may observe, in passing, that the fissures 

 which, in the lower part and near the sides of glaciers, form 

 the granules, about which so much has been written, are stopped 

 by the independent formation of the veins in the ice, which thus 

 demonstrate their prior origin. 



One afternoon I happened to ascend higher than usual 

 above the level of the Mer de Glace, and was struck by the 

 appearance of discoloured bands traversing its surface nearly 

 in the form indicated in fig. 4. These shades, too indistinct to 

 be noticed when near or upon the surface, except upon very 



