was in those long-by-gone days, when the glaciers were 

 descending- form the Alps, and had extended as far even 

 as the Jura mountains, that the mills of the Glacier Garden 

 were formed. The Giant Pots were filled by the moraines 

 from a glacier giving- way under the eifect of a warmer 

 climate, and the detritus brought down by the torrent, 

 and have remained thus hidden till they were exposed to 

 view in the autumn of 1872. 



Similar discoveries have been made, as is well known, in 

 Scandinavia, and in other parts of Switzerland ; but the 

 glacier-mills in Lucerne surpass any of those by the per- 

 fection of their forms and the distinctness of the pheno- 

 menon. To meet the doubts expressed by some visitors, 

 whether man's hand had not assisted nature, I hereb} r testify 

 both as a geologist and as an eye-witness of the first 

 unexpected discovery, as also of the subsequent careful 

 excavations of this so wonderful phenomenon, that the hand 

 of man had nothing whatever to do with the formation 

 of these glacier-mills, and polished surface of the 

 glacier, nor With the erratic boulders that lie about 

 or in those mills, but that we have here fo deal with 

 a marvelous operation of free organic nature , a relic 

 of a time when these countries were not yet inhabited by man. 



Zurich, 1876. 



Albert Heim, 



Professor of Geology at the Federal Polytechnic School 

 and at the University in Zurich. 



