TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION E. 589 
cold is indicated by the moraine detritus under the loftiest portion of the Burrail 
range in latitude 25° 30’. : : 
Whatever may have been the length of the glacial period in the Alps—and it 
was very considerable—in the Himalayas it cannot have been so long and so general, 
although, to a certain extent, contemporaneous. 
In the Alps glaciation meets the eye on every side, and the mountains, up to a 
distinct level, owe their form and outline to its great and universal extension. 
In the Himalayas it is difficult to trace polished surfaces or striz markings, even 
in the neighbourhood of the largest glaciers that are now advancing in full activity. 
It has been suggested that obliteration is the result of more powerful denudating 
forces, but the conditions are not so very dissimilar in the high Alps and high 
Himalayas as to warrant this; and wherever the oldest strize marks occur in the 
Himalayas, they are situated near the bed of the valley. It may interest you if I 
give an illustration or two of the size of these present glaciers as compared with 
those of the Alps. The Baltoro glacier would extend, if placed in the Toce valley, 
from the Simplon to the margin of the Lago Maggiore; or, take another illus- 
tration of its length, from Mont Blane to Chatillon in the Valle d‘Aosta. 
Although of such great length, these Himalayan glaciers could never have 
reached the enormous thickness which the earlier Alpine glaciers attained. This 
may be thus accounted for: in the European area a generally low temperature 
prevailed down to the sea-level, while in the Himalayan it was local, and confined 
_ to a higher level. It is evident that the snow-line has altered—higher at one 
period, lower at another—down to recent times, denoting changes of the mean 
annual temperature, which are not yet fully understood, but have been attributed 
to very far distant distribution or alterations of land, sea, and the ocean currents. 
Two periods of glacial extension are clearly defined, separated by a milder 
interval of climate: during the earlier glacial period the Indus valley was filled 
with those extensive lacustrine and fluviatile deposits, mixed with large angular 
débris, such as we see at Scardo, which may he coeval with the extreme extension 
of the Alpine erratics so far as the miocene hills south of Turin. 
The second period followed after a long interval of denudation of the same 
beds, and would correspond with the last extension of the great moraines of Ivrea, 
Maggiore, Como, &c., followed by a final retreat to nearly present smaller dimen- 
sions. Nowhere on the south face of the Himalaya do we find valleys presenting 
any features similar to those of the Southern Alps, particularly on the Italian lakes, 
which are, I believe, the result in the first place of marine denudation, succeeded 
by that of depression and finally powerful ice-action. On the south face of the 
Khasi and Jaintia Hills, however, which are orographically connected with the 
peninsula of India—the conditions altogether different—we find long stretches of 
water of considerable breadth and depth extending within the hills, and not 
unlike in miniature the Italian lakes. These valleys, worn out of the sandstone 
and limestone rock, have been formed here, I think, to some extent by the aid 
of marine action, and the subsequent depression along this line of hills, also marked 
here, as in the Western Bhutan Doars, by the absence of beds newer than the 
nummulitic. 
This attempt to bring before you some of the great changes in the geography of 
Europe and Asia must now be brought to anend. It is a subject of vast time, of - 
absorbing interest. I am only sorry it is not in more able hands than mine to treat 
it in the manner it deserves, and in better and more eloquent language; but it is a 
talent given to but few men (sometimes to a Lyell or a Darwin) to explain clearly 
and in an interesting form the great and gradual changes the surface of the earth has 
passed through. The study of those changes must create in our minds humble 
admiration of the great Creator's sublime work, and it is in such a spirit that I now 
submit for your consideration the subject of this address. 
1 Godwin-Austen, J.A.S,B. 1875, p. 209. 
