132 MUD. 



lake, compelling the steamers to make a considerable 

 detour eastward. This delta is rapidly extending into 

 the open water, and will in time fill in the whole remain- 

 ing space from bank to bank, cutting off the upper end 

 of the lake about Locarno from the main basin by a par- 

 tition of lowland. This upper end will then form a 

 separate minor lake, and the Ticino will flow out of it 

 across the intervening mud flat into the new and smaller 

 Maggiore of our great-great-grandchildren. If you doubt 

 it, look what the torrent of the Toce, the third assailing 

 battalion of the persistent mud force, has already done in 

 the neighbourhood of Pallanza. It has entirely cut off 

 the upper end of the bay, that turns westward towards 

 the Simplon, by a partition of mud ; and this isolated 

 upper bit forms now in our own day a separate lake, the 

 Lago di Mergozzo, divided from the main sheet by an 

 uninteresting mud bank. In process of time, no doubt, 

 the whole of Maggiore will be similarly filled in by the 

 advancing mud sheet, and will become a level alluvial 

 plain, surrounded by mountains, and greatly admired by 

 the astute Piedmontese cultivator. 



What is going on in Maggiore is going on equally in 

 all the other sub-Alpine lakes of the Po valley. They 

 are being gradually filled in, every one of them, by the 

 aggressive mud sheet. The upper end of Lugano, for 

 example, has already been cut off, as the Lago del Piano, 

 from the main body ; and the piano itself, from which 

 the little isolated tarn takes its name, is the alluvial 

 mud flat of a lateral torrent the mud flat, in fact, 

 which the railway from Porlezza traverses for twenty 

 minutes before it begins its steep and picturesque climb 



