1848.] 



MR. MILWARD S OBSERVATIONS. 



213 



Having now attempted to do justice to M. Collin's interest- 

 ing observations, I pass on to the papers of Mr. Milward.* 

 This gentleman, being acquainted generally with the analogies 

 lately attempted to be established between viscous bodies and 

 glaciers, at once directed his attention to the peculiarities of 

 surface of the great mud-slide which he witnessed at Malta. In 

 the stream of the first slide he observed, under a favourable 

 light, curved bands, alternately dark and light coloured, which, 

 like their analogues, the dirt-bands of glaciers, are best seen 

 from a height, and when the light falls obliquely. On close 

 inspection, these bands were found to be composed (superficially) 

 of smooth, fine mud, and of rough, coarse mud alternately, the 

 latter being somewhat the higher of the two. In a second case 

 of a mud-slide, he found that the smoothness of the mud was a 

 superficial phenomenon due to the settling of the more fluid part 

 in slight depressions existing between " the rough bands, which 

 were raised from a foot-and-a-half to two feet, so as to form ridges, 

 or waves, or wrinkles, swelling and falling over." The sketch given 

 [by Mr. M.] of these " wrinkles" is shewn in fig. 3 of Plate IX. 



Rocks. 





Rocks. 

 Fig. 23. PLAN or GLACIER DU GEANT. 



has favoured me, states that, in his experience of making railway embankments 

 (in Leicestershire), he has found concentric waves or wrinkles pressed out of the 

 soft clay of the embankment, in proportion as the load of earth increases. [In the 

 course of the last ten years I have continued to receive numerous additional con- 

 firmations from several correspondents.] 



* [In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for January 1849.] 



