120 VISCOUS THEORY OF GLACIER MOTION. [1846. 



in detail in all its parts. It is lodged in a niche of the moun- 

 tain called the Schonhorn,* immediately behind the Simplon 

 hospice : we shall therefore call it the glacier of the Schonhorn. 

 From its inconsiderable extent, it might easily be overlooked 

 by a passing traveller amidst the multitude of vast and striking 

 objects by which he is surrounded, f It is perched, as has 

 been said, in a kind of niche on the northern face of the Schon- 

 horn, somewhere t about an hour's steep climb above the 

 hospice ; consequently about 1400 feet higher. The hospice 

 is itself 6580 English feet above the level of the sea ; the mean 

 height of the Schonhorn glacier may be taken at 8000 feet. I 

 had not an opportunity of ascertaining it more accurately. 



Plate X. figs. 1 and 2 [of Phil. Trans. 1846], shows a sketch 

 of a front view of the Schonhorn taken from the opposite heights, 

 and a ground-plan of the glacier. The latter is sketched merely 

 by the eye, but the scale is furnished by some actual measures. 

 I first visited the glacier on the 20th July 1844. It was then 

 covered over, by far the greater part of its extent, with snow, as 

 shown in the plan. This snow is in great part manifestly perma- 

 nent, and the glacier is therefore in the state of neve: The general 

 slope is from top to bottom of the plan, and its inclination is 

 variable, depending upon the direction of the avalanches by 

 which it is fed, of which the principal descends the rapid couloir 

 marked C, [where] the inclination is about 35. This avalanche 

 forms a sort of ridge down the glacier, as indicated by the 

 shading of the map, leaving a considerable space comparatively 

 flat to the eastward. On the west, the snow thins off from 

 the ridge until it exposes the ice near the part marked B, where 

 the slope is still considerable, being 20, and here we have the 

 real mass of the glacier exposed, although the ice is not of an 

 exceedingly hard or crystalline character. The front or lower 



* Also called Hiibsehorn, an equivalent epithet. 



f The reader will not for a moment imagine that it is the Kaltwasser glacier of 

 which we speak, which lies also in the neighbourhood of the Schonhorn, descending 

 from the Monte Leone and Wasenhorn, and from which the Galerie du Glacier on 

 the Simplon road takes it name. \ [Misprinted somewhat] 



[It has not been thought necessary to reproduce these figures.] 



