Attestation*) 



In the autumn of 1872, Mr. Amrein-Troller was having 

 a cellar dug in the proximity of the monument of the Lion 

 at Lucerne. After having removed a stratum of arable 

 earth, several feet in thickness, and another layer of shingles, 

 the workmen struck upon the firm grey rock of the country, 

 in which were sunk many deep excavations, caldron-shaped, 

 at the bottom of which lay large round blocks of Alpine 

 rock. I was called in to examine the nature of the surface, 

 which was soon to be destroyed by further digging and 

 blasting. Along the sides of this first Glacier Mill, sev eral 

 more were discovered. 



Encouraged by competent men, the owner determined 

 not to destroy the rock, but rather to embellish it by plan- 

 tations, and so to render it accessible to such as felt an 

 interest in these wonderful natural phenomena. 



There can be no doubt that these caldron-looking ex- 

 cavations owe their origin to the action of erosions at the 

 foot of cascades. The rounded boulders, seen at the bottom 

 of the mills, have been whirled about by water and have 

 polished the mills by friction. It is in vain we look for 

 the cliffs from which the water must have fallen in a torrent 

 upon the surface of the rock ; but what we do notice is 

 that this surface is furrowed and scratched between the 

 mills, as only glaciers can belabour their rocky beds. The 

 boulders that lay in the mills are errafic, i. e. have been 

 dragged to this place, by the glaciers of an epoch long 

 past, from the innermost parts of the Alps. Many of them, 

 which were before the excavations, covered with layers of 

 detritus and of arable land, show the characteristic furrows 

 and scratches of the stone blocks which are caught between 

 glacier and rock, and have been polished by the slow, for- 

 ward progress of the former. The holes in Lucerne have, 

 incontestably, been hollowed out by the torrents of melted 

 snow that dashed down the steep end of the formerly mighty 

 glacier, or rushed through the ice-crevices down to the 

 ground, and the now-disappeared cliff was glacier-ice. It 



*) We place this attestation at the head of our little work, for the 

 reason that every year some visitors of the Glacier-Garden seem still 

 to have a wrong idea of the discovery of the Glacier pots (or mills). 



M82495 



