THE WONDEKS OF THE SHORE. 23 



the second order, which ends in an ice-clifF hang- 

 ing high upon the mountain-side, and kept from 

 further progress by daily melting. If you have 

 ever gone up the Mer de Glace to the Tacul, you 

 saw a magnificent specimen of this sort on your 

 riglit hand, just opposite the Tacul, in the Gla- 

 cier de Trelaporte, which comes down from the 

 Aiguille de Charmoz. 



This explains our pebble-ridge. The stones 

 which the glacier rubbed off the cliff beneath it, 

 it carried forward, slowly but surely, till they saw 

 the light again in the face of the ice-cliff, and 

 dropped out of it under the melting of the sum- 

 mer sun, to form a huge dam across the ravine ; 

 till the "Ice age" past, a more genial climafe 

 succeeded, and neve and glacier melted away: but 

 the " moraine " of stones did not, and remain to 

 this day, the dam which keeps up the waters of 

 the lake. 



There is my exj)lanati(jii. If you can find a 

 better, do ; buf remfmber always that it must 

 include an answer to — " IIow did the stones get 

 across the lake ? " 



Now, reader, we have had no aljstruse science 

 here, no long words, not even a microscope or a 

 book : and yet we, as two plain sportsmen, have 



