450 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. HI. 



as they are called, he could tell where glaciers had been, 

 even though there was nothing else to show that ice had 

 ever existed in the country. 



Now, when he began to examine the slopes of the Alps 

 many hundred feet above the present glaciers, and also in 

 places where 'it is now too hot for ice to remain, he found 

 to his surprise numbers of these glacial striae and also 

 remains of huge moraines, showing that the glaciers of 

 olden time must once have been much larger and have 

 stretched farther down the valley than they do now. And 

 what was still more strange, these same marks were to be 

 seen on the Jura Mountains, on the other side of Switzerland, 

 where there are never any glaciers at present ; moreover, on 

 the Jura there were found huge blocks, some of them as 

 big as cottages, which were not made of the same materials 

 as the hills on which they rested, but were broken pieces of 

 rock such as are now only found on the Alps. 



It was clear, then, that these enormous pieces of stone 

 must have been carried right across Switzerland from the 

 Alps near Mont Blanc, and across the lake of Geneva, which 

 is 1000 feet deep, and then deposited on the Jura range 

 near Neuchatel, where one block of Alpine gneiss, called the 

 Pierre-a-Bot, as large as a good-sized cottage, sits perched 

 on a mountain 600 feet above the top of the lake. How 

 had these blocks travelled across the Swiss plains? No 

 flood could have carried them, for they were too heavy, and 

 besides they were not smooth as stones are which have been 

 rolled in water, but were rough with sharp edges. Agassiz 

 was convinced, therefore, that they must have been carried 

 by ice, and that huge glaciers must once have come down 

 from the high Alps right across Switzerland, filling the lake 

 of Geneva with ice, and carrying these blocks with them, as 

 modern glaciers do now in the Swiss valleys. 



