10 PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 



in the Spitallamm below the Grimsel Hospice, it has not wholly effaced 

 those features; and wherever a glacier in a recent retreat has exposed 

 a rock surface, that demonstrates its inefficiency as a plough. The 

 evidence of such cases has been pronounced inadmissible, on the ground 

 that the glaciers of the Alps have now degenerated into senile impo- 

 tence ; but in valley beds over which they passed when in the full tide 

 of their strength the flanks show remnants of rocky ridges only partly 

 smoothed away, and rough rock exists on the ' lee-sides ' of ice-worn 

 mounds which no imaginary plucking can explain. The ice seems to 

 have flowed over rather than to have plunged into the obstacles in its 

 path, and even the huge steps of limestone exposed by the last retreat 

 of the Unter Grindelwald Glacier have suffered little more than a 

 rounding off of their angles, though that glacier must have passed over 

 them when in fullest development, for it seems impossible to explain 

 these by any process of sapping. 



The comparatively level trough, which so often forms the uppermost 

 part of one of the great passes across the watershed of the Alps, can 

 hardly be explained without admitting that in each case the original 

 watershed has been destroyed by the more rapid recession of the head 

 of the southern valley, and this work bears every sign of having been 

 accomplished in pre-glacial times. Sapping and plucking must have 

 operated on a gigantic scale to separate the Viso from the Cottian water- 

 shed, to isolate the huge pyramid of the Matterhorn, with its western 

 spur, or to make, by the recession of the Val Macugnaga, that great gap 

 between the Strahlhorn and Monte Rosa. Some sceptics even go so far 

 as to doubt whether the dominant forms of a non-glaciated region differ 

 very materially from those of one which has been half-buried in snow- 

 fields and glaciers. To my eyes, the general outlines of the mountains 

 about the Lake of Gennesaret and the northern part of the Dead Sea 

 recalled those around the Lake of Annecy and on the south-eastern shore 

 of Leman. The sandstone crags, which rise here and there like ruined 

 castles from the lower plateau of the Saxon Switzerland, resembled 

 in outlines, though on a smaller scale, some of the Dolomites in the 

 Southern Tyrol. The Lofoten Islands illustrate a half-drowned moun- 

 tain range from which the glaciers have disappeared. Those were born 

 among splintered peaks and ridges, which, though less lofty, rival in form 

 the Aiguilles of Chamonix, and the valleys become more and more ice- 

 worn as they descend, till the coast is fringed with skerries every one of 

 which is a roche vioutonnie. The nivi in each of these valleys has been 

 comparatively ineffective ; the ice has gathered strength with the growth 

 of the glacier. As can be seen from photographs, the scenery of the heart 

 of the Caucasus or of the Himalayas differs in scale rather than in kind 

 from that of the Alps. Thus the amount of abrasion varies, other things 



